{"id":21201,"date":"2014-04-09T07:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T06:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/2014\/04\/09\/win-as-safe-as-a-house-for-rapha-condor-at-the-mzansi-tour-r1335\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:08:08","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:08:08","slug":"win-as-safe-as-a-house-for-rapha-condor-at-the-mzansi-tour-r1335","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/win-as-safe-as-a-house-for-rapha-condor-at-the-mzansi-tour-r1335\/","title":{"rendered":"Win as safe as a house for Rapha Condor at the Mzansi Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kristian House and his British Rapha Condor JLT team lit up the first day of the Mzansi Tour on Tuesday, scorching up the 5km prologue around Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

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House was first across the finish line and will wear the leader\u2019s yellow jersey on the first stage of the Mzansi Tour in the Free State on Wednesday. Rapha Condor JLT just did enough to hold off the much-favoured MTN Qhubeka team, who finished just four seconds behind them. The Synergy Baku Cycling Project from Azerbaijan were third, five seconds behind the leaders, with the Africa Mixed Team fourth (10 seconds behind) and Germany\u2019s Rad-Net Rose in fifth (13 seconds).<\/p>\n

House is used to victory in South Africa, having won the Tour of South Africa here a few years ago. British-born but raised in Austin, Texas, House is comfortable riding in heat and the cold, and yesterday praised the course and the conditions of the short, sharp 5km prologue, which took his team just six minutes and 37 seconds to finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cI rode in this race last year and have done the Argus,\u201d said House. \u201cI\u2019ve been out here four or five times now. The prologue course was great, technical, some off-camber, dodgy corners you have to be careful on; that massive descent with the corner at the bottom of it was tricky and you had to judge it right. We all got around okay. It was a little scrappy, but we managed to pull it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

House will be hoping to hold on to the yellow jersey on the first day of Wednesday\u2019s 140km stage from the Golden Gate Hotel to Clarens. There are some stiff climbs tomorrow and while House has won a King of the Mountains jersey before, at the Tour of Britain in 2012, he was looking to others in his team, like Rapha Condor\u2019s Luke Grivell-Mellor, who will wear the young riders jersey. \u201cWhether we\u2019ll defend the jersey is another matter,\u201d said House. \u201cWe have some good climbers here. On the mountain-top finish (on stage two on Thursday), hopefully we\u2019ll get up there in a good position and it\u2019ll be good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

MTN Qhubeka will wear two jerseys on the first stage, with Jacques Janse van Rensburg taking the points jersey and Daniel Teklehaimanot, the jersey for the best African rider. Janse van Rensburg said MTN Qhubeka were happy with second place on the prologue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a good result for us, just four seconds behind Rapha Condor,\u201d said Janse van Rensburg. \u201cFor a bunch of climbers in a prologue specialist event, I think we did quite well. We worked quite well together. We made a small mistake in the really fast corner, and maybe lost a few seconds there, but we\u2019re happy with that. It\u2019s good for us with what will be quite a hard stagetomorrow. We don\u2019t have the yellow jersey so we wont have to control the bunch. We can be aggressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team is really motivated and we\u2019re looking forward to the first stage. It\u2019s quite a hard stage and with the altitude, a lot of the European teams are going to struggle a little bit. We\u2019ve been here for a week and we\u2019ve adjusted quite well. The last 30km of the course are hard (on stage one), and I think there will be a decisive move with about 15 riders going to the line. With that short, steep kick at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of pressure on us being the favourites, there is no doubt. As we have got into the Vuelta now there\u2019s a lot of pressure on us to perform, and as this is our home race, we want to put on a good show for the South Africans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The altitude of the Highveld did affect some of the Europeans, with German Christoph Schweizer of Synergy Baku, who will wear the King of the Mountains jersey today, admitting he had been gasping for air on the prologue. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot higher that I am used to,\u201d smiled Schweizer.<\/p>\n

The Mzansi Tour, powered by CATHSSETA, runs from April 8-12.<\/p>\n

STAGES<\/strong><\/p>\n

April 9: Stage 1 \u2013 Golden Gate to Clarens (140km)<\/p>\n

April 10: Stage 2 \u2013 Clarens to Golden Gate National Park (159km)<\/p>\n

April 11: Stage 3 \u2013 Bethlehem to Vanderbijlpark (201km)<\/p>\n

April 12: Stage 4 \u2013 Blue Hills Estate Circuit (79,5km – 15 laps of 5.3km circuit)<\/p>\n

USEFUL LINKS<\/strong><\/p>\n