ProTouch announces team to tackle first Tour of America race

ProTouch Cycling kicked off its first UCI America Tour race when the Tour of the Gila got under way on Wednesday, 1 May, marking the third UCI continental tour ProTouch has taken part in.

ProTouch has been shaking things up on the domestic road cycling circuit for years, and this year decided to take its talents to the African continent, becoming South Africa’s newest continental team listed on the UCI Africa Tour. Since the team’s addition to the African circuit, they’ve taken part in five UCI points-earning tours in the space of four months, and managed to rack up a total of 309,35 UCI points.

These points see ProTouch lie third on the UCI Africa Tour team rankings, behind Rwanda’s Benediction Excel Energy and Algeria’s Sovac, and ahead of fellow South Africa team TEG Procycling. ProTouch’s impressive exploits aren’t limited to the team rankings however, as four of its riders are inside the Top 100 riders on the UCI Africa Tour, with nine riders contributing to South Africa’s UCI points tally.

The Tour of the Gila first kicked off in 1987, so this year marks the 33rd edition of the race which typically starts in Silver City, New Mexico, USA and covers about 540km over the course of five stages. The race consists of three road race stages (Stages 1, 2 and 5, collectively nicknamed the ‘Gila Monster’), an Individual Time Trial (Stage 3) and a Criterium (laps around a closed circuit (Stage 4)).

ProTouch’s participation in the race is the Honeydew-based outfit’s third UCI continental tour after having already taken part in one UCI Asia Tour race (Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia), and five UCI Africa Tour races. ProTouch also named a rather experienced team to head to America to take on the tour. The team consists of Mornay van Heerden, Clint Hendricks, Pieter Seyffert, Mitch Eliot, James Fourie, and Myles van Musschenbroek.