Cycling: William Nartey captures Yellow Jersey in Kumasi

William Nartey of His Majesty Club for the second time in the 2012 Cowbell National Cycling tour of Ghana played a perfect strategy with his team mates to take the yellow jersey after stage 8.

After holding on to the yellow jersey for four stages, Isaac Sackey and his Young Stars team mates could not survive the numerous assaults on the Yellow jersey which is for the best cyclist by time.

William Nartey now leads the standings with the yellow Jersey by 2 seconds.

Sackey however kept his white jersey for being the best young rider even though he arrived 15th at the end of the race.

Die Hard Club continued to be the best team with the blue jersey.

“This was a victory we have been waiting for a long [time] and I'm happy we have won it” Nartey said, during an interview with Joy fm.

When asked what he will do to keep the jersey, he promised to fight any 'break away' from the bunch with the help of his team mates.

Samuel Anim however managed to hold on to his green and red jerseys he had won since the beginning of the competition which means he is still the most aggressive rider(red) and the best rider by points (green).

After the first five laps of race, Samuel Anim took firm control by winning the first hot spot (points) after 52km. He again won the second hot spot.

Isaac Donkor of All Stars came in strongly to break the dominance of Samuel Anim to win the third hot spot.

According to the director of the tour Mohammed Shaban, Samuel Anim has been very impressive but should have sacrificed his green jersey in other to win the yellow but he chose the green which will make it very difficult for him to win the yellow jersey with three more stages to the end of the tour.

The yellow jersey continues to elude Samuel Anim because of his fall during stage 2 from Cape coast to Takoradi, where he lost substantial time.

At the end of the 35 lap race in Kumasi, Newton Kofi of Quick Steps took the stage victory with a time of 2:45:13 closely followed by Samuel Anim and William Nartey in second and third place respectively.

Even though Newton Kofi won the stage, his effort was not sufficient to win any of the jerseys.

Noah Nartey did all the dirty work for his colleague William Nartey by swallowing Samuel Anim when he initially broke away with a distance of 250m at an early stage of the race.

Noah maintained a constant pace line performance until it was time for a sprint finish when he gave way to William Nartey to execute their well laid out plan to win the yellow jersey.

At the end of the 98.4 km circuit race, only 20 cyclists finished out of 61.