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 last 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 team time trial bronze 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 947 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 mocking meme of Meintjes did the rounds. Meintjes, then 23, 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 had finished fifth on the 12th stage after a hard crash. He had unfinished business with the Tour. This year he returned with Lampre-Merida, the Italian team. The 24-year old with calm steel in his eyes and voice rode to eighth overall, second behind Adam Yates in the young riders’ competition, fourth on the stage up Mont Blanc and ninth in the time trial. The Guardian named him as one of five riders who could challenge three-time winner Chris Froome in the Tour de France in future.
“If you told me before the Tour I would finish in the top 10, I would have signed up for that,” said Meintjes. “You prepare as best you can and you hope for some luck but you don’t know how your competitors are going until you get to the race I’ve definitely learnt a lot at Lampre-Merida.
You learn small things from everyone and all that accumulates to make a difference. When you come to a new team, you are exposed to a completely new environment and you get a whole new perspective and take it all in.”
“For me the moment when I began to believe I could compete at the top level was when I finished 11th in Liege-Bastogne-Liege last year. To be in the front group with those guys was big for me. They were the best riders in the world and it was a hard race. The result at worlds was a big one but you’re only racing the best under 23’s whereas Liege had the best guys in all ages in top form.”
In Rio, he continued with his good form. Impey dug deep to keep him well positioned, and the 24-year-old paid that work back with seventh overall, the best result at the Olympics for a South African. He will be the man to watch next year.