{"id":21256,"date":"2014-03-16T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/2014\/03\/16\/buys-nails-xco-victory-for-top-uci-race-points-on-home-soil-r1277\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:10:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:10:50","slug":"buys-nails-xco-victory-for-top-uci-race-points-on-home-soil-r1277","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/buys-nails-xco-victory-for-top-uci-race-points-on-home-soil-r1277\/","title":{"rendered":"Buys nails XCO victory for top UCI race points on home soil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Buys (Scott Sports) conquered the heat and the course changes at the hot and humid Cascades MTB Park to secure victory and a valuable 60 UCI points in the opening round of the Southern African MTB Cup Series in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, today.<\/p>\n

\n\"ccs-2-0-85432200-1394984879.jpg\"<\/a>Philip Buys (Scott Sports)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ccs-2-0-14201500-1394984881.jpg\"<\/a>Brendon Davids (Trek South Africa)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ccs-2-0-62339100-1394984882.jpg\"<\/a>Rourke Croeser (Kargo Pro MTB Team<\/span>)<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

Buys put in a consistent performance to claim the win ahead of Brendon Davids (Trek South Africa), who finished 38-seconds behind, whilst Rourke Croeser (Kargo Pro MTB Team) secured third place despite an injured hand, about 1 minutes 30 seconds behind.<\/p>\n

Buys displayed good form in the Cup Series season opener: \u201cIt was great for Cycling South Africa to put on a UCI Category 1 event \u2013 I didn\u2019t have to travel to Europe to gain these points, I just had to come to Pietermaritzburg and race on the World Cup track today. Sixty points is very valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Absa Cape Epic starts next week Sunday, 23 March, and Buys will partner with none other than cross-country World Champion Nino Schurter (SUI). \u201cMy intensity and power work started late, only in the last 2 weeks. Most of my training has been in preparation for the Cape Epic. Today\u2019s race formed part of my training, and Brendon (Davids) gave me quite a go. It was very hot today and gave me an idea of what I can expect from next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davids was happy with his performance: \u201cThe new World Cup course is running well, and Nick\u2019s (Floros) done a good job with the new layout. It\u2019s beneficial for us South Africans to be racing on a course like this ahead of the World Cup. Philip\u2019s riding very well at the moment and I tried to hang on as long as possible, but heading into lap 3 Phil made a break. The gap was about a minute at one stage, but I managed to bring it back towards the end, to just 38 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Junior Men\u2019s winner Alan Hatherly (Heart-Sports ag) celebrated his birthday with a victory of just over a minute: \u201cToday\u2019s race was very challenging. The course goes straight up and then goes straight into the technical sections. My first lap went very well for me, but I was sick during this week, so my heart rate was a bit high and I struggled with the last three, but I still managed to keep the pace up and I was happy to come out with the win.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s downhill stars will be racing tomorrow, Sunday 16 March, at Cascades MTB Park, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal. Spectators are welcome to attend. For detailed race information, visit the <\/span>Southern African Mountain Bike Cup Series 2014 : Standard Programme of Events<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Summary of results: SA XCO Cup #1 (Cascades) 15 March 2014 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Elite Men \u2013 5 laps<\/strong><\/span>
1 Philip Buys 01:27:21<\/span>
2 Brendon Davids 01:27:59<\/span>
3 Rourke Croeser 01:29:27<\/span>
4 Matthys Beukes 01:29:55<\/span>
5 Renay Groustra 01:30:23<\/span><\/p>\n

Junior Men \u2013 4 laps<\/strong><\/span>
1 Alan Hatherly 01:13:34<\/span>
2 Julian Jessop 01:14:59<\/span>
3 Sybrand Strauss 01:15:27<\/span>
4 Marco Joubert 01:16:40<\/span>
5 Marc Fourie 01:16:50<\/span><\/p>\n

Youth Men \u2013 3 laps<\/strong><\/span>
1 Thomas Jessop 00:58:55<\/span>
2 Jarrod van den Heever 00:59:51<\/span>
3 Andrew Sparks 01:01:14<\/span>
4 Matthew Keyser 01:03:43<\/span>
5 Dean Wortmann 01:04:04<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Buys (Scott Sports) conquered the heat and the course changes at the hot and humid Cascades MTB Park to secure victory and a valuable 60 UCI points in the opening round of the Southern African MTB Cup Series in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, today. Philip Buys (Scott Sports) Brendon Davids (Trek South Africa) Rourke Croeser (Kargo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[959,1286,487,54,2975,196],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-21256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-brendon-davids","tag-cascades-mtb-park","tag-mtb","tag-philip-buys","tag-rourke-croeser","tag-xco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21256"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=21256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}