3rd place again

The 2nd tandem league road of the season, and we had a bit more competition this time. Here’s an (edited) race report from Robby:

The Male Tandem race this weekend saw a record number of 9 male teams at the start line. The biggest surprise of the day was the couple of Adrian Enthoven and Shan Wilson from Team Bowmans.

It was a very tentative start as all the big guns were watching each other which allowed Francois Esterhuizen and Andrew Gouws of Team Vineyard BikeMax to slip off the front. They were soon followed by Adrian and Shan from Team Bowmans, Uwe Schmidt and Nick Coyne also from Team Vineyard BikeMax and lastly Patrick Gaertner and Chad Gordon of Team Microsoft 100/ Virgin Active. This made it 4 tandems up the road with Team Vineyard BikeMax having the upper hand. This left it up to Gary Marescia and Tim Carter of Cycle Lab/ Virgin Active to chase with the rest of us getting a free ride.

Once we turned left after the klapmuts hotel onto the R44 Gary and Tim put the hammer down to get across to the 4 tandems up the road. Only Robby Rodrigues and Peter Wright from Team Vineyard BikeMax managed to hang on and get a free ride across to the break as they had 2 tandem teams up the road. This made the break now 6 tandems but Robby and Peter obviously fresh after getting a tow across immediately attacked as they got on to the back of the group. The others were caught by surprise and were slow to react but it eventually came all back together again. On the last roller on the R44 Robby and Peter put the hammer down again and this time only Adrian and Shan were able to go with. The 2 tandems formed an alliance on the road and worked together to hold off the chasers. Once the gap was big enough the cat and mouse games began with Robby and Peter applying all the pressure on the big rollers on the Paardeberg circuit but they were not strong enough to get away from Adrian and Shan. The 2 tandems up front stopped attacking each other which slowed the pace down and the chasers were starting too close the gap.

In the last 2km the 2 BikeMax Tandems bridged across which set it up for a nail biting finish with BikeMax having 3 teams present. Uwe and Nick led the sprint out with Robby and Peter on their right shoulder. As traffic blocked the way Adrian and Shan jumped past the left hand side and got into the last turn to the finish first, with Robby and Peter accelerating past them after the turn to take the win and the best time of the day at a healthy 44km/h. Adrian and Shan finshed second with Uwe and Nick in third.

“Definately the most exciting tandem race I have ever been in” said Robby Rodrigues afterwards.