Africa-Press – Namibia. MARC Pritzen of the South African Honeycomb Pro Cycling team won the Tour de Windhoek for the second time on Sunday when he completed the five-stage tour in an overall time of seven hours 42 minutes 59 seconds.
Brandon Downes of another SA team, TEG Procycling, came second in 7:43:40, while Pritzen’s team mate Travis Barrett finished third in 7:44:19.
Pritzen didn’t win a single stage, but he effectively sealed the tour victory on the third stage on Saturday morning when he opened up a 48-second lead over Downes in the general classification.
That enabled him to ease home in eighth place on the final stage on the Von Back road on Sunday, finishing eight seconds behind the stage winner Barrett.
The top Namibian cyclist was Alex Miller of Team Megatech Elite who finished fourth overall in 7:45:12, while Jason Eggett of Team Honeycomb came fifth in 7:45:18, followed by two more Megatech Elite cyclists, Konny Looser (7:45:21) and Hugo Hahn (7:46:03).
It was Pritzen’s second victory at the Tour de Windhoek after his initial success in 2019, and he paid tribute to his team for his success.
“Honeycomb has been brilliant – every single stage that we did, we raced as a team and we didn’t hold back. We’ve been racing to win and not racing not to lose and I think that’s where we had an advantage – we were not scared, we were racing the race and just having fun out there,” he said.
The 22-year-old Pritzen was born in Namibia, but moved to South Africa as a youth and in recent years has established himself as one of South Africa’s top cyclists.
In 2019 he won the SA u23 national road race title; in 2021 he won the elite men’s national road race title; and this year, a mere four days before the start of the Tour de Windhoek, he won bronze at the SA road race championships in Mpumalanga.
He has been a regular visitor to Namibia, also winning the Namibian Cycle Classic in 2018, and said he was impressed with the standard of cycling in Namibia.
“It’s really improving year by year – the Namibian cyclists are getting stronger and stronger and the nice thing to see is how many youths there are in Namibia that are coming up. I’m really excited to see where Namibian cycling will be in five years time, because there are some really strong riders coming through,” he said.
Team Honeycomb comfortably won the team competition in an overall time of 22:26:14, with the Namibian Megatech Elite team finishing second in 22:31:13 and Teg Procycling of SA third in 22:40:14.
Ricardo Broxham of Team Honeycomb won the points competition with 49 points, followed by Daniel Abraham of the Mannie’s Bike Mecca team (26 points) and Dean Hopf of the Food Lover’s Market team (25 points), while Alex Miller of the Megatech Elite team won the King of the Mountains competition with 24 points, followed by Pritzen (14 points) and Barrett (10 points).
Vera Looser of the Mannie’s Bike Mecca Ladies team won the women’s title with an overall time of 7:00:53, while her team mate Courtney Liebenberg finished just over a minute behind in 7:01:54, and Melissa Hinz of the Food Lover’s Market Ladies team third in 7:02:09.
Food Lover’s Market won the women’s team category in an overall time of 20:29:26, followed by Mannie’s Bike Mecca Ladies (20:34:00) and Cymot Racing Team Ladies (20:55:48).
Looser made a clean sweep of the individual titles, also winning the women’s points competition with 57 points, followed by Hinz (37) and Liebenberg (33); and the King of the Mountains competition with 20 points, followed by Anri Krugel of the Food Lover’s Market Ladies team (12 points) and Liebenberg (11 points).
The final positions of the general classification, the team rankings and ther Windhoek Light tour are attached.
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