{"id":22276,"date":"2012-07-16T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T12:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/stewart-wins-at-walkerville-r218\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:38:45","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:38:45","slug":"stewart-wins-at-walkerville-r218","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/stewart-wins-at-walkerville-r218\/","title":{"rendered":"Stewart wins at Walkerville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brandon Stewart turned on the afterburners to claim his maiden victory in the Kia Walkerville Mountain Bike Classic, presented by ASG, in sub-zero conditions in Johannesburg on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The FedGroup-Itec Connect pro, from Hilton in KwaZulu-Natal, made an early break in the 60km main event and was later joined by RE:CM\u2019s Waylon Woolcock.<\/p>\n

They matched each other all the way to the Walkerville Showgrounds, where the 15th<\/sup> edition of Gauteng\u2019s largest and coldest winter race finished on the slippery speedway circuit.<\/p>\n

Stewart duly outdragged his breakaway companion to take line honours in a fast 1:55:55. Woolcock, a former Old Mutual joBerg2c champion, finished three seconds back.<\/p>\n

\"Brandon<\/a><\/p>\n

Brandon Stewart of FedGroup-Itec Connect claimed his maiden victory in the Kia Walkerville Mountain Bike Classic, presented by ASG, on Sunday. Photo: Action Photo<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The latter\u2019s team-mate, Neil MacDonald, completed the podium in 2:02:02.<\/p>\n

Stewart said the shale surface, which is designed for motorbikes to slide on, had made the final stretch particularly challenging and exciting. \u201cIt was almost like a mini Paris-Roubaix finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The win rounded off a successful weekend for the 31-year-old, who also took third in the Nissan TrailSeeker Series race in Cullinan on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always fantastic to win, especially when the event is backed by one of our team sponsors,\u201d said Stewart.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, Walkerville was my big focus but I think it was good for me to do the Cullinan race because it loosened me up a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he felt his form was good enough to make an early break on the big Platberg climb, which came after just 10km of pedalling.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeil and Waylon were always going to be my strongest competition, so I thought I\u2019d give it a go while everyone\u2019s legs were still feeling a bit cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gamble paid off and Stewart opened a gap on the chasing group. \u201cThen I was on my own and I just carried on making the race really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, some confusion over route markings saw him lose valuable time and Woolcock managed to close the gap just before the halfway mark.<\/p>\n

MacDonald, riding alone in extremely windy conditions, was about five minutes off the pace at this point.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo then it was just the two of us who worked together for the rest of the way,\u201d said Stewart.<\/p>\n

The former national cross-country champion described the route as well balanced.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had that big climb in the beginning, some tricky rocky downhill sections, nice sparse single track, open sections and a bit of tar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s race was won by Nicci Grobler of bizhub-FCF in a time of 2:18:22, followed by Carolyn Smith of Complete Cyclist in 2:28:24 and Nataly Barbosa in 2:45:26.<\/p>\n

Walkerville was the first of five mountain bike races in the new Kia series. The next is the Kia Val de Vie Classic near Paarl on September 15.<\/p>\n

Contact ASG Events on 076 621 1807 or eventsupport@asgworld.co.za<\/a> for more information, or follow @CyclingnewsZA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brandon Stewart turned on the afterburners to claim his maiden victory in the Kia Walkerville Mountain Bike Classic, presented by ASG, in sub-zero conditions in Johannesburg on Sunday. The FedGroup-Itec Connect pro, from Hilton in KwaZulu-Natal, made an early break in the 60km main event and was later joined by RE:CM\u2019s Waylon Woolcock. They matched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":53688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-22276","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\/22276","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=22276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22276"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=22276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}