SA cycling ace changes lanes

After just shy of 10 years as a professional in the World Tour cycling saddle, SA powerhouse Reinardt Janse van Rensburg has shifted gear.

Last month, he won the Momentum 94.7 Challenge event in Johannesburg, 10 years after he had first triumphed in that event.

But for now he is back in Pretoria and taking time to look back on a wild ride on the UCI World Tour that brought both crests and troughs aplenty.

He is not exactly putting the brakes on his cycling tour, saying the US will be his playground next year and an announcement to this effect will be made soon.

Now a few months shy of his 34th birthday, the Virginia-born ace can still remember his first road race. “I was 11 years old, at Laerskool Transvalia at the time, and was riding a Pick n Pay steel bike.

“Then, two years later I got a proper road bike as a Christmas present and won my first race, in Bronkhorstspruit.”

That was pretty much the first entry on his impressive palmarès of cycling achievements down the years.

“My first race with the pros on the World Tour was the 2011 Vuelta Andalucia in Spain where I raced alongside [legendary Spanish rider] Alejandro Valverde who was in his prime ... though he was in his prime for about 15 years,” recalls Janse van Rensburg.

“Just after that I took second in a one-day classic in Almeria so I had a great start to my career.”

Two years later he turned pro with the then MTN-Qhubeka outfit and did the Sun Tour in Australia on the Continental Tour stage, where he ended up winning the second stage and taking fourth in the GC (general classification).

During his career he has remained mainly loyal to the MTN team through its different iterations of Dimension Data, Qhubeka and NTT, alongside spells with Giant-Shimano and most recently Lotto-Soudal.

And it is his latest team that gave him a huge sense of pride. “Apart from my stage victories etc, this year has made me really proud. I didn’t have a team contract until mid-April when Lotto Soudal came in for me and just two months later I was named in their Tour de France team.

“Believing in my own resilience, grit and fight no matter the odds was a great feeling.”

Spending more than 10 years on the global circuit served up many more memories for the man known as “The Beast”, after a particularly gritty chase during the Clover Tour in Mpumalanga many years ago.

“Looking back I’d probably say 2015 was my favourite team year, with MTN. We created so much history for the African continent, being the first ever professional African team racing at the Tour de France.

“We went in with no expectations but we punched way above our weight. We were second in the team classification until two or three days before the end, when Louis Meintjes, one of our star riders, got sick and we slipped back.

“But still, we surprised so many people and earned a lot of respect in world cycling.”

On a personal front he counts his Malaysian triumph in the 2016 version of the Tour de Langkawi and in Europe, the Binche-Chimay-Binche one-day classic in Belgium. “That was a special one, especially beating someone like the host nation’s Greg Van Avermaet,” he recalls.

“Local is lekker” holds true for the rainbow nations’ home boy. “Winning SA nationals on two occasions is still a highlight for me. You cherish any win but your own national title is always special.”

Which brings one to low points and he says “cycling is a sport that always bring low points because there are so many factors at play on any given day that if you miss your moment they don’t come around that quickly”.

Like the national championships. He won his first national road title in 2017 before injury. “I gave myself a sport hernia that needed operating on and I was out for about six months. That was a definite low point.”

Injuries are part and parcel of sport which saw him grinding out the training routines over the years. “December/January are usually our toughest months and you’ll spend between 22-30 hours a week on the bike, 2-3 hours in the gym and then probably an hour of running.”

Crashes are also part of the sport but thankfully he’s got off relatively lightly. “I broke my finger when I was 16, but probably the most major crash was in France after which I needed an op years later to fix broken cartilage [Bankart Lesion] in my shoulder and of course, I’ve had a few concussions.”

Cycling aficionados may remember his big coming together with Mother Earth at this year’s Tour de France. “That was definitely the most spectacular when I came off at around 74km/h and spun through the air like a rag doll.

“It made for a great TV crash but miraculously I didn’t have a scratch. Lining up for the next day’s stage no-one could believe that I’d come through unscathed.”

His personal life hasn’t been unscathed though, with a nasty scare for girlfriend [now wife] Leilani while the pair were at their Spanish base of Girona.

“That was in 2014. She just started getting swollen feet. A month later she came home and was admitted straight into ER with renal failure and doctors said it was just days before she would have gone into a coma.”

Leilani was on kidney dialysis for six months before her father gave her the gift of life in the shape of a kidney transplant. “She’s been healthy ever since and till this day we’re living a miraculous journey.”

If he had to give back a gift of knowledge to the new generation of cyclists it would be to live life on all fronts. “The youngsters turning pro now are already at the highest level due to the progress of scientific training. All they need to learn is how to race, and that you can only learn through racing.

“My concern is that modern-day pressure in cycling is so intense now that they run the risk of never having a social life and that’s an important part of growing up, because it’s hard to get those years back.”

For now though as he faces the new chapter of his life in the land of stars and stripes, there’s no doubting that the beast will roar once more.