Three South Africans in three different teams will line up for start of the Tour de France on Saturday, it was confirmed after Dimension Data announced a squad that, predictably, leaned towards the strengths of sprinter Mark Cavendish.
Reinardt Janse van Rensburg will be the South African in the South African Dimension Data team, joined by Eritreans Daniel Teklehaimanot and Natnael Berhane. Daryl Impey has been included in the Australian Orica-GreenEdge squad, while Louis Meintjes was confirmed as a general classification contender for Italian outfit Lampre-Merida last week.
Cavendish has 26 Tour de France stage wins, the third most in the history of the race, and Dimension Data’s big signing has been given a lead-out train that the team hope will take him above the 28 won by Bernard Hinault and closer to the 34 of Eddy Merckx.
Cavendish will rely on Austrian Bernhard Eisel, Australian Mark Renshaw, Norwegian Edvald Boasson Hagen and Janse van Rensburg in the final bunch kicks. Instead of a time trial prologue, the 2016 Tour starts with a sprinter’s stage that finishes at Utah Beach, part of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.
Steve Cummings, the Brit who famously won the stage of the Tour on Nelson Mandela Day last year, has been on form this year, and will once again be looking to get into breakaways.
Belgian Serge Pauwels finished 13th overall in last year’s Tour, while Daniel Teklehaimanot, who was crowned the Eritrean road and time trial champion at the weekend, became the first black African to wear a major jersey at a Grand Tour when he pulled on the King of the Mountains jersey. He won the mountains category at the Criterium du Dauphiné for the second time this year.,
There will be some talk about the lack of South Africans in the Dimension Data team after two – Jaco Venter and Jacques Janse van Rensburg – were cut from the long list of 13 announced last week. Venter has been in superb form this year, while Jacques Janse van Rensburg was one of three South Africans and five Africans in the 2015 Tour. Team principal Doug Ryder admitted yesterday the final choices had not been easy.
“This was a really tough decision to make as all of the riders on the squad have stepped up and shown their potential to be in the Tour de France,” said Doug Ryder, team principal of Dimension Data. “This is a fantastic team of experienced riders we are hoping can deliver on our performance goals of winning stages, being competitive and visible every day, to raise our profile to even greater heights in the incredibly demanding stages of the 2016 Tour de France.”
Rolf Aldag, the head of performance at Team Dimension Data, described the team as “balanced”. “The first few days will be dominated by the sprinters and we are confident to be right up there with Cavendish, Boasson Hagen and the committed lead out around Renshaw and Janse van Rensburg.
Pauwels, Teklehaimanot and Cummings proved in the past that they can be very successful from breakaways and that is what we try to repeat. Eisel will serve as a road captain, while Berhane will learn a lot in his first Tour as well as he will get his own chance on selective stages.”
Dimension Data squad: Natnael Berhane (Eri), Daniel Teklehaimanot (Eri), Edvald Boasson Hagen (Nor), Mark Cavendish (GB), Steve Cummings (GB), Bernhard Eisel (Aut), Reinardt Janse van Rensburg (RSA), Serge Pauwels (Bel) and Mark Renshaw (Aus).
Independent Media