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|  | | Philip Buys at speed |
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| 2010/7/20 - Beat Philip Buys (Garmin-adidas) and win Nissan’s Diamond Rush over 70km in Cullinan
That is going to be the challenge on Saturday (24 July) for any pro-elite rider with dreams of winning the race. Out riding Buys is certainly going to be a tall order. Especially since he is the official “King” of the Nissan-series. In five outings he has never been beaten.
Buys was not in the best of moods this week. Actually he was frustrated or to put it more truthfully he is really “gatvol” at the moment.
He still cannot believe the way his body had let him down during Saturday’s (17 July) MTN Cross Country Championship at the Fountains in Pretoria. Buys was the outright favourite to win the SA u.23-title and after the first lap when he was mere second slower than Burry Stander (Specialized/Mr Price) it looked like a done deal.
But from the third lap on “Lady Luck” turned her back on Buys.
“I made the mistake of going a little too fast into one of the corners and that caused my front tyre to jump off the rim. I had to stop to put in a new tube. Then I decided to rather play it safe. So I changed wheels when I came to the technical zone, which also cost me time.
“However, my worst problem was when I started to cramp during the last laps. It got so bad that I had to stop and stretch for a minute or two at a time. I don’t think people understand how frustrating it can be standing next to your bike doing stretching exercises and then see riders riding up to you and pass you and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
“I wish I knew what causes it for me to cramp so badly because I definitely cannot allow it to continue happening. It already cost me one title. When something like this happens you start to doubt your own abilities.
“That is why I battle at the moment to get excited about Saturday’s Nissan-race, but I hope come race day things would have changed for the better and my hunger to win races will be back.
“What certainly helps is that I always enjoy Nissan’s races. The organizers go out of their way to make things interesting.
Francois Theron (Garmin-adidas) is also frustrated but for different reasons. He also had a lot of bad luck during SA Championship but he can only blame himself.
“I made a stupid mistake getting over hasty to pass a rider in front of me and did not look where I was riding. The end result was I got a stick stuck between my wheel’s spokes. My derailleur also got bend. To make a long story short the rest of my race was one big mechanical frustration.”
Theron has for awhile been talking about the fact that he owes to himself and his sponsors to get a good result. So don’t be surprised if Saturday’s Diamond Rush boils down to a royal battle between him and Buys because both of them are driven by pure frustration. | |
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