Tour de France #5: Gutsy ride by Serge Pauwels
Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka rider finds break of the day
Greg van Avermaet (BMC Racing) won the 5th stage of the Tour de France and the Belgian also moved into the overall race lead. Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) finished in 2nd place and Rafal Majka (Tinkoff) rounded out the stage podium.
Today was the first stage of the 2016 Tour de France that saw any significant amount of climbing as riders had to deal with just over 2000m of ascent between Limoges and Le Lioran. While 2000m climbing is not a huge amount by Tour de France standards, the majority of the climbing was squashed into the final 50km of the stage. With the GC favourites not too keen on showing their cards this early in the race, it was the perfect stage for the breakaway.
Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka knew the importance of being in the break today and so Daniel Teklehaimanot and Serge Pauwels were both very attentive at the stage start. Pauwels eventually made the move of the day with 8 other riders. The peloton let the group go to a 6 minute advantage, before some in-fighting began among the leaders. Van Avermaet, De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) and Andrey Grivko (Astana) attacked and Pauwels tried to cross over to the trio alone. Pauwels got to within 12 seconds but couldn't close the gap.
As the 3 rode away, the gap to the peloton ballooned up to 15 minutes and it was clear the winner would come from the breakaway. Going over the final 2 categorised climbs of the stage, Van Avermaet showed he was the strongest by going solo, and rode to a good win. Pauwels was hoping to hold off the chasing group of GC favourites and claim a top 10 stage result, but a crash on the penultimate descent of the stage saw our Belgian being caught with 3km to go and eventually finished in 26th position. A brave effort by our African Team rider who will no doubt be looking for more breakaway's later in the race. All of our other African Team riders completed the 216km stage with no real issues.
Serge Pauwels - Rider
Today I made the main break of the day. It was a difficult day, the heat made it really quite tough and I was suffering from it for a large part of the day and didn't really feel all that good. I tried my best today but in the end, the GC guys caught me.
Team Dimension Data For Qhubeka
Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka was founded in 2007, steadily working its way up from a regional team to now being a World Tour team with bases in South Africa and Italy. It’s also known as Africa’s Team due to its focus on helping African talents to the world stage of cycling. The team races to raise funds for the Qhubeka Charity to mobilise people on bicycles in Africa. To contribute to the #BicyclesChangeLivescampaign, click here.
Qhubeka is an Nguni word that means “to progress”, “to move forward”. Qhubeka (qhubeka.org) is part of World Bicycle Relief (worldbicyclerelief.org), a global non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing education, health and economic opportunities by providing simple, sustainable transportation through the power of bicycles.
Dimension Data (dimensiondata.com) uses the power of technology to help organisations achieve great things in the digital era. As a member of the NTT Group, we accelerate our clients’ ambitions through digital infrastructure, hybrid cloud, workspaces for tomorrow, and cybersecurity. With a turnover of USD 7.5 billion, offices in 58 countries, and 31,000 employees, we deliver wherever our clients are, at every stage of their technology journey. We’re proud to be the Official Technology Partner of Amaury Sport Organisation, organiser of the Tour de France, and the title partner of the cycling team, Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka.
Learn more about the team at www.africasteam.com.
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