Impey Powers To Time Trial Victory in PE – by Nick van der Leek
“I want to get my name back up in international cycling where it belongs.” Daryl Impey did exactly that starting at 11:28am on a fast, flat 40km course at SA Road Championships in Port Elizabeth on Thursday. The ex-Radioshack rider came home in 52.01.
“I hadn’t ridden a time trial in a while, so I started this one quite conservatively. I wanted to have something in the tank on the way back.” This strategy proved decisive, because at the turn, the riders faced a very stiff, very warm headwind, one most seemed to have underestimated. 13km after the turn Impey had left Mountain Bike demon Burry Stander (ranked 7th in the world in MTB) behind and had reeled in four times world champion XTERRA triathlete Conrad “Caveman” Stoltz – who had started one minute ahead.
On twitter afterwards Stoltz described his hamstrings after the turn as ‘on fire’. Despite the wind, Impey (MTN/Qhubeka) averaged 46.1km/h on an Eddie Merckx frame, using a Fast Forward Disc wheel and in the front, a deep section rim.
“I started training for this in November,” Impey said, “when other guys were taking their break. I did a lot of motor pacing, and had a lot of help and support from my fiancé, family and friends. It was a group effort.”
Asked to elaborate on his training Impey said that although training indoors is “horrible” time on the wind trainer, going at maximum effort for an hour, was a key workout.
Ahead of the race there was talk that world champion triathletes and mountain bikers would eclipse the roadies. But the podium showed otherwise; Impey and roadie runners up Jay Thomson (Bissell) and Darren Lill (DCM) ended speculation that mountainbikers or triathletes can compete with professional road racers.
1. Daryl Impey (MTN) 52.01.20
2. Jay Thomson (Bissell) 53.03.60
3. Darren Lill (DCM) 53.04.20
4. Conrad Stoltz (Specialized) 53.06.10
5. Burry Stander (Specialized/MrPrice) 53.24.90
Note: Conrad Stoltz later tweeted:
@NickVDL Once Impey caught me at 28 or 30k it was surprisingly easy to keep up and trade the lead.He made about 30" from 20-25k-i suffered@NickVDL if I had known how close it was, I could have found a few more Ws. With 390 I thought I was way out of the game.
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