Today’s penultimate stage of the Absa Cape Epic was a real test for the riders; the title of Queen stage went to Tuesday’s 146k, but today’s 99k had the most climbing, at 2,950m. And that number was made tougher by the fact that a good deal of the climbing was in the last portion of the stage, and a lot of it was pretty steep.
First up the riders had a shock upon waking up this morning though, with the sound of raindrops falling on tents at 4:50am. Those who rode in 2012 will have had nasty flashbacks of that stage; luckily they were to be spared a repeat of that, as the rain stopped again before the start at 7, and they were left with quite civilised mid-20s temperatures.
Heavy skies over Wellington
The racing was fast and furious again; the top two teams, Burry Stander – Songo and Bulls 1, were together until around the third water-point, when Burry Stander – Songo pulled away, and maintained a 2:30 gap to the finish, strengthening their grip on the yellow jerseys. Says Kulhavy of Burry-Stander SONGO: “Today was very nice and quite easy. I’m really happy with our stage win, especially for Christoph as Stellenbosch is his second home. We increased the gap again. Now we only have tomorrow and I hope it will be good and that we don’t have any problems.”
Says Platt of the Bulls: “We put in everything that we had. After the second water point as we started the last part, it wasn’t that fast but Urs (Huber) dropped back. He had a bad moment for about ten minutes and we lost about two minutes. Since then we were chasing all the time and we tried hard. At the beginning it wasn’t a friendly competition, but that’s racing. The guys (Sauser and Kulhavy) were very strong. I had very good legs today and we rode well most of the way. It looks good.” Huber adds: “It was hard today and we tried to keep on fighting, but the Songo boys are very strong.”
Notably, Team Bulls had three teams in the top five – impressive depth from the team.
One of the Bulls teams exits a tunnel
There was an upset in the Ladies race, where leaders Catherine Williamson and Yolande Speedy suffered another crash and lost out to the C-Bear team of Laura Turpijn and Sara Mertens; they only lost eight minutes though, not enough to threaten their convincing overall lead.
Says Turpijn of C-Bear: “We never expected to win a stage or even to be second or third. Today was hard but I’m so proud of Sara. She kept on pushing. It was good and I’m really happy.” Adds Mertens: “We’re very happy. This is my third Absa Cape Epic – the first one I just wanted to finish. The second time I wanted to have fun, which I didn’t have in the first one. And this one I wanted to finish on the podium and Laura helped me with that.”
In Mixed, the RE:CM Kleinhans team reasserted their dominance after missing out on the stage win yesterday. Bucher and Zoerweg of Songo.info won again in Grand Masters; likewise team Bridge of Pfitzenmaier and Azevedo in Masters.
Will’s race for Subaru-MarathonMTB.com
I’m not really sure where to start today. It was an eventful day to say the least. Yesterday I reflected on some of the racing dynamics of being an Outcast rider. Today though I was exposed to some different and somewhat surprising elements of riding solo.
I was with a group containing the William Simpson team and local boys Carl Pasio and Nic Lamond, plus R2 bike from Germany and Buff from Spain. It was hurting hanging with them, and the Spanish and Germans then pulled away before the first water point at 37k. I pulled into the water point and chucked down some Coke. Immediately on leaving the feed, a similar miracle happened as in previous days at about 90 minutes in – my legs started to function properly again, and I pulled away from the other guys up a steep climb. I made it up to R2 Bike, rested for a minute and went through them on the flattish farm roads. There ensued some 60k of battling into headwinds on my own and then grunting up the last steep climbs.
Taking the start in Wellington
However, aside from the fact that I actually felt pretty good, I started to feel a bit like the wounded buffalo that has been separated from the herd! First up, two separate incidents of small dogs running alongside my feet and feinting attacks on my ankles. Luckily some shouting and a turn of speed on the flat made them nothing more than feints. More painful was some kids chucking a golf ball-sized stone at me, which caught me in the ribcage. Cue some more swearing. It turned out this was just a warm-up act, though, because on one of the steepest climbs at about the 85k mark, while I was grinding along at about 3kph, a large hairy black monster of a dog ran around me, barking, before deciding to take a chunk out of my right ankle. It was mostly a shock rather than being really painful, but I’ve got puncture wounds and a tetanus shot to show for it. And suffice to say that the swearing hit new levels…
Events took a more positive turn though, because the only 3 of the 62k I passed on my own today were spent trying to hang onto the wheels of Nino Schurter and Florian Vogel. Clearly they weren’t going full gas, given that they were down in my part of the field – Vogel has been ill and has his knee heavily strapped – but they can’t be in all that bad shape, given that they came second on yesterday’s stage. I hurt myself pretty badly trying to stay with them, not just on the climbs but on the descents, where I was treated to a masterclass in trail riding – Schurter launching off bumps that I was rolling, treating them like big doubles. For an amateur like me, it was a pretty special few minutes, and a reminder of one of the many things that makes this race so amazing.
Unusual aggressive kids / dogs aside, it’s been a great three days for spectators / support on the trail. Thursday was a public holiday, so I suspect many people had ‘fait le pont’ as I think the French would say and made a long weekend of it. There have been loads of people out on the trails, and big crowds at the waterpoints, all with an enthusiastic cheer and a clap, and a good bit of moral support for this lone rider.
Another pleasing make-believe result – my time would have been good enough for 18th overall, 16th in the Men’s field. Mixed emotions now – I’m getting really tired and therefore excited for tomorrow being the last day and it all being over, but at the same time I don’t want it to be over; it would still be better with a team-mate – it was tough coming into the finish and having no-one to share the experience with – but days like today have made this week simply the most incredible adventure – one that I would recommend to anyone.