{"id":22372,"date":"2012-03-24T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/lill-secures-king-of-the-mountains-lead-in-portugal-r123\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:41:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:41:25","slug":"lill-secures-king-of-the-mountains-lead-in-portugal-r123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/lill-secures-king-of-the-mountains-lead-in-portugal-r123\/","title":{"rendered":"Lill secures King of the Mountains lead in Portugal"},"content":{"rendered":"

South African Darren Lill secured the King of the Mountains leader\u2019s jersey on Stage 2 of the Volta a Alentejo tour in Portugal on Friday.<\/p>\n

Riding for Team Bonitas, Lill sprinted to second place over the only King of the Mountains prime on the relatively flat stage. His main rival in the competition, Portugal\u2019s Jose Mendez (LA\/Antarte), was third over the summit, giving Lill the outright lead in the climber\u2019s competition, after the pair shared it on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"lill-port2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Darren Lill (behind the Yellow Jersey) bides his time in the peloton on a day in which he secured the King of the Mountains category leadership.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy: Volta a Alentejo<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But Lill only has a lead of one point over Mendez, with Russian Sergey Belykh (Locosphinx) three points behind the South African. With no mountains points on offer on Saturday\u2019s third stage, Lill will retain the leader\u2019s jersey at least until Sunday\u2019s final stage.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s 191.3km stage from Portel to Santiago do Cac\u00e9m finished in a bunch sprint with Russian sprinter Alexey Kunshin (Locosphinx) grabbing the win and taking the overall lead in the process.<\/p>\n

Hanco Kachelhoffer (Team Bonitas) was again the first South African home on Friday, finishing safely in the large lead bunch. He is one of 14 riders sitting 11 seconds off the race lead going into Saturday\u2019s penultimate stage, another relatively flat haul over 168.6km from Odemira to Ourique.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Friday\u2019s stage, Team Bonitas\u2019 Luthando Kaka and Jason Bakke were each involved in small breakaways, which were brought back. Lill tried to bridge to a five rider break later in the stage, but the field saw that as a dangerous move and reeled in Lill and the breakaway group.<\/p>\n

\"lill-port1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Darren Lill receives the King of the Mountains leader’s jersey.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy: Volta a Alentejo<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ll take it steady on Stage 3 and if an opportunity presents itself we will take it, but we\u2019re not going hunting for it,\u201d said Bonitas team manager, Barry Austin. \u201cThere is total control by the two top teams from Portugal, so a move up on General Classification will be hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main objective will be to keep the King of the Mountains jersey on Stage 4, the final stage. Chasing too many goals may easily cause you to lose the one you have achieved. That being said, we will be wide awake for any \u2018gifts\u2019 that come our way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aim today was to get Darren into the King of the Mountain\u2019s lead and the guys achieved that. I\u2019m very pleased with that,\u201d said Malcolm Lange, owner of Team Bonitas. \u201cThey\u2019re riding positively and are showing some good form among some really strong teams. It\u2019s great to see our European campaign starting on such a good note.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African Darren Lill secured the King of the Mountains leader\u2019s jersey on Stage 2 of the Volta a Alentejo tour in Portugal on Friday. Riding for Team Bonitas, Lill sprinted to second place over the only King of the Mountains prime on the relatively flat stage. His main rival in the competition, Portugal\u2019s Jose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":53853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-22372","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\/22372","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=22372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22372"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=22372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}