Absa Cape Epic: Protests on Stage 4

As touched on yesterday, when talking about DNF’s, we read a lot about races in the results sheets alone – even though they don’t always relay the whole story of a race. At the moment, it seems the 4th Stage of the 2013 Absa Cape Epic is set to be another race where the results sheet doesn’t tell the story – even for the top 10!

With a fast and dusty start, the pace was quite high for the front of the race. Rene Haselbacher and Wolfgang Krenn again animated the first half of the stage with a breakaway. But that wasn’t to last. At the top of the Bains Kloof climb, it was the Burry Stander – Songo team of Christoph Sauser and Jaroslav Kulhavy who had taken a commanding lead. With nearly 2:30min on the chasing group, they seemed intent on narrowing their margin to the race lead. Two Team Bulls teams appeared next, with Karl Platt and Urs Huber wearing the race leaders jerseys accompanied by Tim Bohme and Thomas Dietsch. Merida Multivan riders Jose Hermida and Rudi van Houts were also in this fast moving chase group.

From after the next water point – it was a different story. Reports stated that Sauser and Kulhavy had extended their lead – even unto six minutes. Waiting at a creek crossing, it was a large gap after the leaders came through, until a line of six riders were seen in the distance, charging downhill. The farmers who were marshall’s in our location moved into action – those riders were off course. Or more accurately, they were off todays course and onto tomorrows course, which was pre-marked.

In time, other teams came through, with Kohei Yamamoto and Max Knox, and Bulls 3 and Cannondale Factory Racing. None knew of the previous chasers going the wrong way.

After being chased down by official motorbikes, the two Bulls teams and Multivan-Merida turned around. They did not know they weren’t on the right course, as they were following course markers. When they were back on track, they were a full 20 minutes behind the leading pair of Sauser and Kulhavy for where we were spectating.

Christoph Sauser and Jaroslav Kulhavy of Burry Stander – SONGO showed their true form by winning Stage 4 of this year’s Absa Cape Epic in a time of 4:32.49,3 (overall 19:40.04,9). This is Sauser’s 28^th stage win in the history of the event. They were followed by Marco Fontana and Manuel Fumic of Cannondale Factory Racing in 4:50.56,9 (overall 20:28.02,1) who were highly surprised to hear they were 2nd. In third place with their first podium finish this year were South Africans Philip Buys and Matthys Beukes (SCOTT Factory Racing) in 4:52.17,4 (overall 20:36.23,9). The Bulls Karl Platt and Urs Huber, as well as Thomas Dietsch and Tim Boehme, finished in seventh and eighth place respectively after losing their way.

A protest was lodged after the finish, and the full results of this took some time to come out. It appears that the stage results will stand, however the General Classification results will minimise the time deficit by 10 minutes. So the gap from Burry Stander – Songo to Bulls 1 is much smaller.

Full results and live tracking can be seen on the Cape Epic website, as usual.

Will Hayter’s view for Subaru-MarathonMTB.com

Getting out of the tent this morning was tough after another all-too-short night. After the long, brutal day on Tuesday, I’ve been unsure how far I would be able to muster up the motivation to race without my team-mate, and with nothing more at stake than the personal satisfaction of going quickly. So I set out this morning with the general plan of going as hard as my legs suggested.

Which for the first hour really wasn’t very hard at all. I felt sluggish, with nothing really in the tank. Breakfast was sitting heavy again – while my digestion was highly efficient on Monday, eating the same amount today just resulted in a general feeling of lassitude. I was seeing people I hadn’t seen so far in the race, which is never a good sign. One team though came as a particular surprise – as I was closing a small gap to a group about 20k in, I looked round to see a white jersey with colourful stripes – Nino Schurter, with his team-mate Florian Vogel. A bit of discussion later on revealed that Vogel was struggling with an injured knee, and looked to be hanging.

I’m not sure how, but about 90 minutes in, my legs suddenly appeared at the party, which also came as a bit of a surprise. Just another of those slightly unpredictable stage racing effects – the uncertain period it takes for the engine to get going in the morning, which tends to get longer as the week goes on.

I pushed fairly hard over the second climb of the day; caught various people, and then pulled into a group on the flat; got onto the front and drifted off it again, up to the next group on the road before the next climb; drifted off the front of that on the climb, and then just before the summit was caught by Roel Paulissen and his team-mate, who had had a puncture early on. It was an honour to ride with them and nine-time Absa Cape Epic finisher Brandon Stuart for about 15k, until they dropped me once the tarmac climb of Bains Kloof really kicked in.

From there on, it was a case of survival, particularly up the rocky final climb, where there was no breath of wind, and the sun was beating down. But the reward was some truly fabulous singletrack from the peak down to the vineyards below – almost 4k of flowing, fast trails; a place to open up the suspension on the Bianchi and let ‘er rip. Suffice to say though that I was very pleased indeed to see the finish. If I was still in the official results, I would have been somewhere in the low 20s; which came as a bit of surprise given how I felt for the first hour and a half.

Tomorrow brings a much shorter stage – 75k to today’s 120. Who knows what legs it will bring though?