Louis Meintjes held on to his eighth spot in the Tour de France on Tuesday, but lost a chunk of time to Simon Yates in the Best Young Rider competition.
The South African ended 29th on the 165 kilometre stage between Le Puy-en-Velay and Romans sur Isere as Australian Michael Matthews won the sprint for Sunweb.
He was 51 seconds off the pace on the day as Reinardt Janse van Rensburg was best South African on the stage, the Dimension Data for Qhubeka ending 11th with the same time as the winner.
In the white jersey competition, Meintjes was 51sec down on Yates on the stage and has slipped back to being 3min 58sec after 16 stages.
As far as the General Classification, Meintjes is exactly six minutes down on yellow jersey leader Chris Froome of Sky.
Next best is Daryl Impey, the Orica-Scott rider, up to 59th, 1:39.50 back.
Then it’s Janse van Rensburg in 115th (+2:26.24) and Jaco Venter (160th, +3:11:05).
It was an impressive day for the African outfit, Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka riders, who put in an impressive performance on Mandela Day. The team were always attentive near the front and at the end, Edvald Boasson Hagen finishing in second place after narrowly missing out on the victory.
Starting out with a 20km ascent, numerous riders attacked right from the beginning of the day. The fast pace soon proved too much for the green jersey, Marcel Kittel (Quick Step Floor), who quickly got dropped.
This prompted Team Sunweb to go to the front in order to pull for their designated sprinter, Matthews. Dimension Data’s Steve Cummings took part in the workload at the front of the peloton, which ultimately saw the group with Kittel getting dropped for good.
The team were very motivated to do well on Mandela Day. On the final 15km, the peloton split up into several groups in the crosswind, leaving just a dozen of riders at the front. Boasson Hagen made the cut, and so did Scott Thwaites and Janse van Rensburg.
Daniele Bennati (Movistar) tried to take the front group by surprise on the 2km, but Janse van Rensburg closed him down and delivered Boasson Hagen in a good position for the sprint. Unfortunately the strong Norwegian lost a few positions in the final corners, but thanks to a powerful sprint, he still managed to take second place, narrowly beaten by Matthews. John Degenkolb (Trek-Segafredo) was third.
Wednesday sees the riders taking on the first big stage in the Alps.
It’s 183km between La Mure and Serre-Chevalier with two monster hills lying in wait. The first is the Col de la Croix de Fer. While there are a few downhill sections, the climb rounds off at 24km with an average of 5.2% gradient, with some nine, 10 and 11% sections.
But that’s just a precursor to the real pain as the Col du Galibier awaits. It’s 35km of ascent to an altitude of 2645m. It’s the first time the Galibier has been included in the tour since 2011. After the lung-busting climb there’s an attention-grabbing 8km descent and then a final straight section to the finish.
Picture of Janse van Rensburg in the lead group on Tuesday courtesy of ©Tim De Waele/Getty Images