ROHAN du Plooy and Sonica Klopper grabbed the honours on Sunday when they were the respective winners of the 100km Invitation Race at the aQuellé Tour Durban in association with Cycle Lab on the Durban beachfront.

Team Fly Cool Collective’s Du Plooy easily outsprinted the remainder of the breakaway group to claim the men’s title from Ryno Schutte (Team Nessa Africa) and Honeycomb 226ers’ Scott Blount.

Klopper led home teammates Megan Botha and Lucy Young for a Tshenolo Women’s Pro Cycling team 1-2-3 after the trio were able to stay in the main men’s peleton for all but the last couple of kilometres.

Du Plooy said he enjoyed the race format of two 26km laps and then the action of four fast 12km circuits from Moses Mabhida Stadium to Durban North on the M4.

“It was different…not like we are used to coming from Johannesburg where we do not do too much lap racing,” said the race winner.

The Durban race rounds off a good few months for Schutte who was also on the podium at the Cape Town Cycle Tour last month, and the Dis-Chem Ride for Sight in February, as well as claiming a top five in the SA Champs earlier in February.

The women’s race was a war of tenacity with the three Tshenolo Women’s team members clinging onto the leading men’s peleton before Klopper edged out her teammates.

“Our plan today was just actually to stick with the men for as long as we could,” said Klopper, as she celebrated with her teammates.

The trio’s result also meant they finished fourth overall in the CSA National Inter-Club Challenge – the first time teams have raced for an unofficial national team title. The title was won by Cartime Nextgen Pro Cycling with Kellan Gouveris, Rhys Burrell and Brad Gouveris finishing fourth, fifth and eighth respectively, to just edge out Honeycomb 226ers by eight seconds with Cartime Nextgen’s Academy team finishing third, just ahead of the Tshenolo women’s team.