{"id":21644,"date":"2013-08-19T09:25:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T08:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/2013\/08\/19\/good-news-for-african-cycling-ahead-of-tour-de-lavenir-r865\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:26:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:26:09","slug":"good-news-for-african-cycling-ahead-of-tour-de-lavenir-r865","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/good-news-for-african-cycling-ahead-of-tour-de-lavenir-r865\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news for African Cycling ahead of Tour de l\u2019Avenir"},"content":{"rendered":"

The development of African cycling received another boost today when the line up of the World Cycling Centre\u2019s team for the Tour de l\u2019Avenir was revealed. The race takes place from 24 \u2013 31 August and is known as the Tour of the Future as most riders who excel in the race go on to earn professional contracts.<\/p>\n

\"MTN-Qhubeka-Day-29-e1376659595107.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo: www.teammtnqhubeka.com<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Riders from all the UCI World Cycling Centre satellite stations competed for six starting spots. Five of those positions were awarded to ridefs from the African World Cycling Centre, who acts as the feeder squad to Team MTN-Qhubeka p\/b Samsung.<\/p>\n

South Africans Nicholas Dougall and JC Nel, Namibians Costa Seibeb and Till Drobisch, Eritrean Merhawi Kudus and Ivorian Issiaka Cisse all form part of the line up.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all it means we\u2019re doing something right,\u201d said Director of the World Cycling Centre Africa, JP van Zyl. \u201cWe\u2019re getting results, winning races in Europe, and showing that we\u2019re not standing back for any competition. I also believe we\u2019re the team with the most opportunities in Africa. If you come to the World Cycling Centre team, whose the official feeder team to MTN-Qhubeka p\/b Samsung, you\u2019ll have a chance to progress and the opportunities are there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tactic in the first few stages will be to give everyone in the team an opportunity. When we get to the mountains we\u2019ll protects Merhawi. I believe he\u2019s a rider who can finish on the podium and possibly win the Tour de L\u2019Avenir,\u201d van Zyl said.<\/p>\n

Seibeb\u2019s selection comes as no surprise as he recently won the EKZ Z\u00fcri Metzgete in Switzerland. Dougall played a part in the victory and has also impressed since getting to Europe a few weeks ago. After getting the good news he said, \u201cI\u2019m super happy to be selected. If someone had told me a month ago I would be doing it I probably wouldn\u2019t have believed it. The racing is going to be really tough. It\u2019s 8 days and the parcours are very hilly. It\u2019s a big race so everyone\u2019s going to be competitive and really fighting for position and to show themselves. We expect aggressive racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of Team MTN-Qhubeka p\/b Samsung\u2019s riders first revealed their talent in the Tour de l\u2019Avenir. Andreas Stauff won a stage in the race in 2009 while Jaco Venter finished fourth overall the same year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The development of African cycling received another boost today when the line up of the World Cycling Centre\u2019s team for the Tour de l\u2019Avenir was revealed. The race takes place from 24 \u2013 31 August and is known as the Tour of the Future as most riders who excel in the race go on to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":53137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3308,2432,5242],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-21644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-team-mtn-qhubeka","tag-tour-de-lavenir","tag-word-cycling-centre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21644"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=21644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}