TILL Dröbisch won the Namibian Cycle Classic for the second year in a row yesterday, when he completed the 100km event in two hours 27 minutes 56 seconds.
Dröbisch finished 32 seconds ahead of second-placed Costa Seibeb, while Michael Pretorius came third in 2:31:51.Dröbisch and Seibeb attacked on the Daan Viljoen hills when they passed the first breakaway group of Jacques Celliers, Thorsten Kreft and Gerhard Mans. They built up a big lead on the chasing pack and it was only a few kilometres before the end that Dröbisch managed to pull away from Seibeb to take the victory. It was a great performance by the 19-year-old Dröbisch, who smashed the previous fastest time for the event of 2:30:47 that was set by Erik Hoffmann in 2009, although this year’s route was slightly different, with the race starting and finishing at SKW and not at the United grounds as in the past. Seibeb’s ‘Team Das’ won the team competition after his team mates Xavier Papo and Ananias Ananias finished fourth and fifth respectively. Dröbisch thanked his team mates for their support. ‘We had a great team and Mannie Heymans was working for me the whole time. There was a breakaway with Jacques Celliers and Thorsten Kreft, and Costa’s team and Mannie Heymans were working at the front the whole time to just keep the distance quite close to the breakaway group.’’Then on the Daan Viljoen hills Costa and I attacked and we just went past the breakaway group and from there on I was just riding and trying to stay away from the others. After Heartbreak Hill I tried to go, but Costa stayed on my wheel and then I managed to go clear, but it was really hard because the wind was coming from the front and I think I just rode a little bit too hard,’ he said. Vera Adrian won the women’s race, finishing 29th overall in 2:40:54, while Irene Steyn came second in 2:46:59 and Genevieve Weber third in 2:48:46.There was once again a large turnout of cyclists of close to 1 000 who participated in four different categories over 100km, 65km, 30km and 20km. Gerhard Cornelissen won the 20km category in 37:04, followed by Francois Visser (39:12) and Ryno van Wyngaarden (40:57).Kean de Jager won the 30km category in 1:04:16, followed by Johannes Lepen (1:04:36) and Shapang Afrikaner (1:04:36).Thorsten Horenburg won the 65km category in 1:42:42, followed by Israel Alfred (1:42:45) and Hartmut Ruppel (1:42:45).
