The first local PPA race of the season kicked off this weekend with the West Coast Express hosted by the Outriders. The excitement of the Cape Town Cycle Tour entries opening in the previous week was great enough to get over 700 people to brave the freezing conditions out in Melkbos! It was a very busy cycling weekend on the calendar, with racing in Port Elizabeth, Tour de Maurice and the Piketberg MTB race on the same weekend all that considered, it was a decent turn out.

This meant the A bunch looked a little different to normal with the majority of riders being from Savage, Cyclopaths and the youngsters from Team 13. This did lead to some great racing out on the course.

The race set off at 7:00 on the dot with the sun just starting to peak out through the ice lined clouds and started to defrost everyone’s fingers. The group rolled out onto the R27 and straight away the attacks started. By the turn off to the Mamre road the breakaway had a 25 second gap, but with the excitement of some “climbing” shortly after the turn off, the breaks advantage quickly evaporated.

Flying through Atlantis there were a few attacks off the front, we had Aaron at the front still thinking he was on Zwift and kept activating the Aero Boost and chasing down attacks, where we all know he should have been using the Draft Boost and saving the watts.

As the route swung towards the N7 Willie and Brendon found themselves in a break on the drag up to the N7. Unfortunately, rather than seamless rotations on the front it looked like a breakaway made up of Valverde’s and Quintana’s. The slight headwind put an end to the breakaway as the race ramped up onto the N7.

There was a well-timed attack on the N7 by Team 13 that strung out the entire bunch on the drag up the N7 with many a dead wheel being dished out near the back of the group!

On the descent to Melkbos, Malcolm “Needs to eat some lunch” Isaacs and 4 others opened up another 10 second gap on the group, the boys brought it back together with a bus and a lorry doing some pulls on the front.

Brendon thought this would be the best time for another breakaway in the final 5km and the small group opened up a 10 second gap. The gap lasted until Brendon over cooked one of only 8 right turns on the entire course. This provided the peloton with the entertainment of watching him trying to channel his inner Mathieu van der Poel and keeping the bike upright over the grass embankment. Mathieu managed to get back onto the black stuff and onto the front of the peloton and make sure Kevin was near the front when the fun started.

Picture- Cycling with Double ST

The Team 13 boys opened up the sprint a little optimistically at 500m to go to the line, as the steam in the pistons ran out with 200m to go another sprint lit up! Our race recce may have missed the fact that the timing matts were only on the left hand side of the road, this lead to Kevin pulling a Cavendish and swinging left across the line for third!

The winning time was 1:57:25 and the podium was Jaco Davel , Jarrod van den Heever and Kevin “the Bus” Dolley. Pure Savage has launched its ladies Double Century team this year and had an amazing first race taking all three spots on the podium! Congrats Christelle, Yvonne and Renate!

We are happy to announce our first Race Day Reward from Bootlegger! Every race we take part in we will chose a rider that rode Savagely and deserves a coffee ride on us and Bootlegger! This week the team nominated Dale Haupt, he was in the early break of the day and was constantly attacking, get in touch and we will get your voucher to you!

The next race is the PPA Sportif #5 at Simonsvlei on Sunday!