A break of five riders got away on top of the first climb of the day. Along with Kriek was his CSA Toyota-teammate Willie Smit, Jason Bakke (Bonitas), Richard Baxter (Tasol GT) and HB Kruger. They worked together for the next few kilometers, but soon Bakke and Baxter stopped working in the break seeing that their team's sprinters were in the bunch and they wanted the victory. "I said to Willie that we shouldn't be negative and rather just keep on focusing and work together with HB. At 80km HB punctured though and then it was only Willie and me driving the break."
Their biggest gap to the bunch was 3 minutes. At 5km to go the games started with Bakke and Baxter attacking Kriek and Smit. "At 2km to go we could see the bunch." Kriek kept on hoping that they might be able to stay away, but he quickly realised though that the speed of the bunch is just too fast. "You want the win desperately, but there is no way you can go faster to hold them off."
"Obviously the disappointment is huge, but I know we gave it our all. We could not have done anything different," said Kriek. "Winning from a breakaway like that is against the odds. But we had to try at least."
According to Kriek he has two options now. "I can be negative and let the disappointment get to me or I can look at the positives from my effort. I felt good on the day. There is always next year to try again."
