{"id":22223,"date":"2012-09-03T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/stander-gets-back-to-back-wins-in-preparation-for-world-champs-r271\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:37:20","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:37:20","slug":"stander-gets-back-to-back-wins-in-preparation-for-world-champs-r271","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/stander-gets-back-to-back-wins-in-preparation-for-world-champs-r271\/","title":{"rendered":"Stander gets back-to-back wins in preparation for World Champs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toyota Momentum professional cyclist, Cherise Stander, continued her run of good form when she won two races back to back at the weekend, one on a mountain bike race and the other on a road bike.<\/p>\n

The newly crowned South African mountain bike marathon champion had to fight hard from start to finish for her victory at the Nissan Trailseeker Down and Dirty 70km mountain bike marathon in Centurion, Gauteng on Saturday. But on Sunday at the 93km Dome2Dome road race, she raced tactically and managed to claim the title in a sprint.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaturday\u2019s race was very hard. I really had to fight for that win right from the start. I crashed early on due to the bottlenecking on the route and then just rode as hard as I could to catch Theresa Ralph, who I considered my main opposition. There was so much dust so it was hard to see who was ahead, but I eventually caught her and then stayed with her,\u201d explained Stander.<\/p>\n

\"cherise.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From left: Nicci Grobler (third), Cherise Stander (first) and Theresa Ralph (second) were the first three women at the Nissan Trailseeker Down and Dirty 70km Marathon on Saturday.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Photo: Zoon Cronje<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ralph moved ahead of Stander at the penultimate water point when Stander stopped to fill her bottle. Stander then chased and caught Ralph, who then was unable to match Stander\u2019s surge after the final water point with six kilometres remaining, giving Stander the victory in a time of 02 hours 38 minutes 50 seconds, good enough for 29th<\/sup> place overall. Ralph finished second in 2:39:28 and Nicci Grobler (bizhub FCF) was third in 2:43:52.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did struggle a bit with the altitude as I\u2019ve been at sea level for ages, but wearing the national champion\u2019s jersey I was determined to do it justice,\u201d said Stander. \u201cIt makes you dig a little deeper. I dug deep,\u201d she smiled.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s road race was Stander\u2019s first domestic road racing appearance in months, having raced abroad with Momentum Toyota\u2019s European partner team, Lotto Belisol since April.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good to see the young riders like Heidi Dalton (Toyota CSA Academy), who is a junior, racing so well. And even without the presence of some of the riders from the Momentum Toyota and MTN Qhubeka teams, there was still positive racing,\u201d remarked Stander afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t feeling super strong after my mountain bike race on Saturday, so decided to stay with the lead group as long as possible. I did try one attack but it really wasn\u2019t impressive, so I sat in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mecer Black Spade team dictated the race mostly. I really just conserved as much energy as possible for the finish and had enough left to be able to win the sprint,\u201d said Stander.<\/p>\n

Stander crossed the finish in a time of 02 hours 42 minutes 36 seconds, just edging out An-Li Pretorius (MTN Qhubeka) and Anriette Schoeman (Mecer Black Spade) who were second and third respectively.<\/p>\n

Stander used the weekend\u2019s racing to prepare for the 2012 Road World Championships, which take place in Valkenburg, Holland from 15-23 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toyota Momentum professional cyclist, Cherise Stander, continued her run of good form when she won two races back to back at the weekend, one on a mountain bike race and the other on a road bike. The newly crowned South African mountain bike marathon champion had to fight hard from start to finish for her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":53602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-22223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223","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=22223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22223"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=22223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}