A real good ride in 2016

Minnaar and Co keep cycling flag flying high, Meintjes one to watch

IT WAS a year when South African cycling stood up and was counted. From Louis Meintjes to Daryl Impey, Ashleigh Moolman -Pasio and, of course, Greg Minnaar.

To start with the man they call the greatest downhill mountain biker of all time. Minnaar won the Fort William leg of the World Cup, his 19th victory, two more than anyone else.

Moolman-Pasio has consistently been South Africa’s top female cyclist for the past few years.

The bronze medallist from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games had a notion she could do something special in Rio. She stayed with the leaders, eventually ending 10th, the highest placing by a South African at the Games.

Earlier in the year she had won the Premondiale Giro Toscana Femminile, and a bronze at the team time trial at the world championships in Doha. Unfortunately, she crashed hard near the end of the season and was off the bike for three months.

She missed out on the Telkom 94.7 Cycle Challenge, the UCI-ranked international event that has been instrumental in the development of women’s cycling in South Africa.

Daryl Impey will end his career with Orica-BikeExchange, the Australian team regarding him as one of the leaders.

He helped them to bronze in the team time trial at the world championships, but it was his second-place finish on stage seven of the Tour de France that was possibly his greatest ride of the year. He lost out to Steve Cummings of Dimension Data on a stage that had rolling hills.

During last year’s Tour de France a slightly cruel and mocking meme of Meintjes did the rounds. Meintjes, then 23 years old, was sitting with the rest of the MTN-Qhubeka Tour de France squad, looking younger than his years, like a schoolboy, and above his head was the legend: “Best school outing ever!”

He never got to finish the “school outing”, forced out after suffering illness towards the end of a Tour in which he