Locals gear up for Tour de France
Louis Meintjes and Daryl Impey will be the vanguard of a fourstrong group of South Africans who will compete in the Tour de France when it starts on Saturday.
Louis Meintjes and Daryl Impey will be the vanguard of a fourstrong group of South Africans who will compete in the Tour de France when it starts in Düsseldorf, Germany, on Saturday.
Jaco Venter, who will be making his Tour debut, and South African champion Reinardt Janse van Rensburg have been included in Team Dimension Data’s squad, which once again features British sprinter Mark Cavendish, who has struggled with illness.
Janse van Rensburg will form part of Cavendish’s lead-out train as the Isle of Man star seeks to break the record for the most stage wins at the Tour.
Of the four, Meintjes will be the one to watch in his third Tour de France. He is regarded as a favourite to take the white jersey for riders under-25 and, after a strong showing at the recent Critérium du Dauphiné, is targeting podiums and a possible stage win.
Meintjes, who rides for UAETeam Emirates, was second in the youth category and eighth overall at 2016’s Tour. His second place in the youth category, and third place on the final stage, where he dropped several Tour contenders, including threetime winner Chris Froome, has not gone unnoticed.
Impey, who became the first African to wear the yellow leader’s jersey at the Tour de France in 2013, has taken on a leader’s role at Orica-Scott, the Australian team.
He was second behind Dimension Data’s Steve Cummings on the rolling hills of the seventh stage of 2016’s Tour and has been included in his fifth outing at the Grand Boucle for his versatility.
“Impey is one of the most versatile riders in our team. He can be used across a variety of stages,” said Matt White, OricaScott team manager.
Impey has just come back from injury after crashing and breaking a collar bone in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April.
Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka have gambled on the fitness of Cavendish, who, with 30 stage wins, is just four off equalling the record of Belgium great Eddy Merckx.
He only returned to training six weeks ago after a season disrupted by contracting the Epstein-Barr virus earlier in 2017. He will be joined by Scott Thwaites, the Englishman who will also make his debut, Cummings, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Bernhard Eisel, Mark Renshaw and Serge Pauwels.
Cummings, who has won two stages at the Tour for Dimension Data, completed a rare double this weekend, winning the British championships in the road and time-trial races.
The team will be targeting specific stages.
“It’s been a difficult few months for me on the back of the illness that set me back earlier on in the season,” said Cavendish. “Despite this setback and my lack of race time I’ve worked incredibly hard to ensure I could firstly recover from the illness as well as aiming to build my fitness up as much as possible in order to start the Tour.
“Had this not been the Tour de France we may have collectively taken a different approach with regards to my inclusion but I feel that I owe it to myself, the team, our sponsors and most importantly to the Tour itself given its history and everything that it stands for — as well as the emotional attachment I have for it — to give it my best and to put everything I have into trying to help the team.”