The ProTouch DotModus Cycling team is still at it in Europe! The team recently completed 4 races held in Turkey on the weekends of the 3rd and 4th as well as the 10th and 11th of July 2021. Despite the scorching temperatures of the Turkish summer, the boys achieved some good results.
The first race was the Grand Prix Germenica held on the 3rd of July 2021. The race got off to a scorching start with temperatures of around 42°C.
Callum Ormiston started off well but had difficulty managing the extreme heat and lost contact with the group. Kent Main had some tire trouble and although he managed to catch up with the peloton, missed an opportunity to join an early breakaway.
With help from Andries Nigrini and Gustav Basson, Kent was brought in range of the lead chasing group and ultimately managed to join them.
In the end, an original breakaway of 3 riders managed to stay clear all the way to the finish. Kent managed to finish in 6th place, after attacking the remnants of the chasing group. Andries finished 29th, Gustav 58th, and Calvin Beneke 66th.
The second race was the Grand Prix Kahramanmaraş, which was held on the following day - the 4th of July 2021. Luckily for the boys, the temperature wasn’t as high but today’s challenge was the wind.
The team did a good job monitoring and managing each attack. Strong crosswinds made racing tricky. The first real “gutter” of the day took place early on with Calvin, Kent, Tiano Da Silva and Gustav in this move. Tiano assisted his senior teammates with a well-timed feed from the team car, just as the race lulled.
The pace was on during this race and never really eased off as the group continued to split leaving Gustav as the sole rider coming into the finish as part of the final sprint taking a well earned 14th place, followed by Kent in 26th.
The penultimate one-day race in Turkey was the Grand Prix Erciyes, held on the 10th of July 2021. They were all fired up for a super aggressive and non-stop race.
While the team started off strong, some of the boys had a few unfortunate punctures which meant they used some of their energy to catch up with the peloton. Like the previous races, they were faced with intense cross tailwinds. Impressively, the whole team managed to avoid being caught out by gutters by staying up front. After a good fight, Kent finished in 12th place and Gustav Basson finished in 24th place.
The final race was the Grand Prix Kayseri, held on the 11th of July 2021.
The boys were well represented in all of the breaks and controlled the peloton for pretty much the entire race. Unfortunately, the team was unable to avoid those pesky punctures once again. Despite this, they continued to dominate the race and Kent finished 8th, Callum 21st and 3rd in the U23, and Andries 5th in the U23.
All of us at DotModus wish to congratulate the team on their effort during their time in Europe. We’re certain that this experience will only help them as a team for all of the races going forward.
You can check out our recaps of their previous races over the past couple of months here, alternatively, you can follow the team on Facebook where they post detailed recaps of all of their races here.
