The organisers of the aQuellé Tour Durban cycle race have taken the decision to postpone the 2020 edition of the Durban classic to a date later in the year, following the national government state of disaster announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa last night in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision to postpone the aQuellé Tour Durban was taken after extensive consultation with the UCI, Cycling South Africa, KZN Cycling, the event sponsors and partners and stakeholders in the cycling community as the event sought to balance the significant public support for the event while ensuring that it unreservedly supports all of the initiatives announced in the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak in South Africa.

“First and foremost we have to look after the health and wellbeing of every single participant, and all of our staff, marshalls and volunteers,” said event director Alec Lenferna. ”To that end we have been guided by national and regional governmental departments, who have been very helpful and clear in their guidelines.

“We are working with the relevant role players in a bid to locating a suitable weekend in spring that can host the two days of events as planned. We will do all in our power to ensure that the event, which clearly has a very large following, can go ahead, and at the same time to retain the benefit to The Domino Foundation that is the beneficiary of the race.

“The fact that we can all #Ride4Good is at the heart of this race and we will do everything we can to stage the race later in the year to give the riders their weekend riding on full road closure on Durban’s highways, and sustain the important financial lifeline to The Domino Foundation.” he said.

Lenferna said that while it was clearly not an option to stage the race at the end of April, he was working hard with the UCI, Cycling SA and KZN Cycling as part of the enforced reorganisation of the cycling calendars in a bid to postpone rather than cancel the race.

He said that the new date for the event would be announced early in April, and that all the entries received would be fully transferrable to the new date.

“Evaluating all the circumstances over the next months, and if we can still go ahead later in the year, we should be able to retain all the appeal of the event in spring when there is stable weather before the full rainy season commences”