Events

Buys beats the bunch to win the fifth and final Nissan TrailSeeker event

· By BikeHubCoreAdmin · 0 comments

Philip Buys (Scott) kept his word on Saturday when he won the Nissan TrailSeeker Down and Dirty Marathon, the fifth and final event in the immensely popular Gauteng based Nissan TrailSeeker Series held in Centurion.

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Last week Buys was still in two minds on whether or not he would be racing. “My body took quite a hammering during the Cape Pioneer Trek. My legs are tired,” Buys complained. But as a moth can’t resist a flame so Buys simply can’t resist competing in the Nissan TrailSeeker races it would seem.

On Thursday he decided he was going to race and he made no secret as to what his goal was. “I will definitely not be racing to finish second. I love competing in the Nissan TrailSeeker Series as the racing is always fast and exciting and it is guaranteed that you will be racing through some challenging technical sections” said Buys last week.

It should be no surprise that Gawie Combrinck (Westvaal/Bell Cycles) attacked early on during Saturday’s race. He realized racing from the front is a sure way to “cement” his overall victory in the Nissan TrailSeeker Series. It might also have been that Combrinck wanted to finish in style leaving no doubt about whom the strongest rider throughout the series was.

Being the seasoned campaigner he is, Buys decided to play the waiting game. “Matthew (Brittain), the Olympic gold medal rower was with me. At times he was getting worried about Gawie being out in front on his own. I told Matthew to relax it would be good for Gawie to sweat it out on his own for a little bit longer especially since the conditions were quite windy.”

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“We made sure that we could see Gawie at all times which meant that he never had more than a minute lead on us. We caught up with him with about 20km to go. For the next 15km pretty much nothing happened. We just rode together at a nice steady tempo.”

“I saw an opportunity to attack when we got to quite a tricky technical section about 5km from the finish. I just led my breaks go and soon I was out in front on my own,” Buys said. His winning time for the 70km race was 2 hours 12 minutes and 56 seconds. Brittain was second in 2:13:45 and Combrinck third in 2:13:59.

By finishing third Combrinck ensured that he is the overall winner of the Nissan TrailSeeker Series. Robyn de Groot (Biogen) raced to her second consecutive victory winning the women’s race in 2:35:12. Christine Janse van Rensburg was second in 2:38:56.

Image credit: Zoon Cronje

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