Lesotho Sky Day 5 – Malealea to Roma

Day 5 was a true old school mountain bike day, with a strong dose of new school right at the end. We found a new route to bring riders into Roma, which included a bit of hike-a-bike and gnarly rocky descents. The day was marked by a challenging headwind that made the long climbs even more difficult.

At the sharp end of the field, Reinhard Zellhuber and Andrew Hill was sitting pretty with a 6 minute lead on Allard Basile and Remy Bourdon of Team Rebloch Power. This meant that they could leave the racing up to the French riders. Apart from the last 10km of very technical terrain, it was a relatively easy day for the leading team to defend their lead. There were no real attacks during the race, but rather a steady increase of pace as the day rolled on. The leading Lesotho team was able to keep up with the pace until the final sections, but found the pace too challenging towards the end. 

The wheels of Zellhuber and Hill crossed the finish line first at a time of 4:08:41, just a second ahead of Basile and Bourdon. Tumelo Makae and Phetetso Monese of Alliance Insurance rolled over the line in 3rd place, 18 minutes later.

Result summary 

UCI Teams:

1st:Team Garrun-Tib Insurance – Reinhard Zellhuber and Andrew Hill -4:08:41

2nd: Team Rebloch Power – Allard Basile and Remy Bourdon -4:08:42

3rd:Team Alliance Insurance – Tumelo Makae and Phetetso Monese -4:26:34

4th: Team Standard Lesotho Bank – Malefetsane Lesofe and Katleho Manasi -4:46:22