South African WorldTour star Daryl Impey has powered to his ninth national time trial title at the Swadini Forever Resort, Mpumalanga, in so doing extending his unbeaten run to eight years.

The 35-year-old lined-up as the pre-race favourite and showed just why as he negotiated the 36km course in a time of 41 minutes 52 seconds to take the win by 40-seconds over Stefan de Bod (NTT Pro Cycling). His early-season form is, once again, proving dominant at home, after near-misses at the Australian calendar openers where he repeated his third-place 2019 finish in the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, and narrowly failed to retain, for the third successive year, the overall title at the Tour Down Under.

Impey will now turn his attention to Sunday’s 175km road race as he looks to do the TT and road double for a third successive year at the national championships.

Daryl has now won the ITT national title every time he has entered, starting in 2011, skipping 2012 (Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg won) and the last eight years on the trot.

“The race itself was pretty tough, it was quite difficult coming from the Tour Down Under and Australia, then backing up four days later to do a time trial, but I managed the course really well and came in the best I could considering the jetlag.”

“It’s always nice to bring the jersey back to Europe and, doing it for the ninth time, it’s been quite a nice run so far. It’s just nice to represent my country with the South African flag for another year, I think that’s important,” Impey said.

2020 Elite South African TT Championships:

Article courtesy of Bicycling