JOHANNESBURG – Daryl Impey and Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio confirmed their status as the king and queen of South African road cycling, winning the national titles in Pretoria over the weekend.
Moolman-Pasio won her fifth national road race title with Impey winning only his second, while he also clinched his eighth individual time trial on Friday.
Moolman-Pasio produced an excellent solo ride in the road race on Saturday, finishing nearly two minutes ahead of nearest rival Juanita Venter with a time of 4hr 01min 40sec.
Venter crossed in second place with a time of 4:03:31 with Joanna van de Winkel finishing third in 4:04:41.
“Juanita Venter was strong, I was worried for a while as the gap between us did not seem to get any smaller,” Moolman-Pasio said. “I, therefore, decided not to wait until the last lap and tried to make a move earlier.”
Congrats to @Cycle_Nation for creating the racing today! Super impressive performance by @juanita_cycle being out in the break for 100km and still hanging on to 2nd. Congrats to @lincolnking_ and team. Chapeau 👏 #SAChamps pic.twitter.com/x0VTQJGDhb
— Ashleigh Moolman (@ashleighcycling) February 9, 2019
Impey’s eighth individual time trial victory on Friday, is a record for the most national victories in the event.
He was in dominant form over the 52km course to finish the race one-minute 11 seconds ahead of Stefan de Bod in second place.
“I’m really happy to pull off number eight. Every year I have more pressure coming here and it is obvious that they want to be the first one to ‘dethrone’ me,” the Mitchelton-SCOTT rider said. “I rode probably one of my best time trials and definitely some of my best numbers ever. I wasn’t sure coming into this year’s event as I have done less time trial work than before.”
Yesterday, Impey held off a strong challenge from a full-strength Team Dimensions Data winning the 162km road race in a time of 3:54:30.
He finished 25 seconds ahead of Team Dimension Data’s Ryan Gibbons in second place with Stefan de Bod bagging bronze in 1:01:54.