Cape Epic, racing to Lourensford

Mike Blewitt

12 years ago

The final day of other big stage races is known to be a little bit of a procession. General Classification will be wrapped up, and the racing for show. The 7th Stage of the 2013 Absa Cape Epic started in Stellenbosch and took a difficult, yet short 54km route (1550m climbing). And the racing was full gas!

Lots of the power at the front came from the cross country specialists like Multivan-Merida with Jose Hermida and Rudi van Hout, and Cannondale Factory Racing riders Marco Fontana and Manuel Fumic. Also in the mix were Scott-Swisspower duo Nino Schurter and Florian Vogel. But perhaps the most outstanding were the Scott Factory Racing pairing of Phillip Buys and Matthys Beukes. They animated the race while in the lead of the African category.

The bunch was split over the climb, and Buys and Beukes were gapping Hermida and van Houts, who appeared to be struggling on the rough ground on hard tails. The Scott pairing forced the pace, and this duo of teams had a gap of 2 minutes to the chasing Cannondale Factory Racing team. Sauser and Kulhavy were a further minute back, and then Bulls behind them. General Classification wasn’t upset, but the racing was hot.

Champagne and a media swarm.

Merida-Multivan took more leadership of the pace in the run into Lourensford when off the descent and into farmlands. It was set for a sprint finish. Beukes and Buys pushed hard but it was Hermida and van Houts who outsprinted them in a tremendously close finish to win the stage. Schurter and Vogel followed 2:40 later for 3rd. Burry Stander-Songo were 4th, Cannondale Factory Racing were 5th. Full results are online.

: Bart Brentjens rolls in for the Stage Win

Bart Brentjens and Robert Sim won the Masters race, but the Bridge Team held their big lead for the overall win.

Peta and Jarrod

The Kleinhans took another stage win and a commanding overall win in the Mixed category, but it was great to see Peta Mullens and Jarrod Moroni finish 4th on the stage and hold onto their 2nd place overall on the general classification.

The Ladies category was won by a stunning combination of Sara Mertens and Laura Turpijn (Team C-Bear), who also won Stage 6. With Yolande Speedy nursing a broken collarbone and 2 broken ribs from a crash yesterday, they crossed a lot later but took the overall win while C-Bear finished 2nd overall.

The Sprint finish

Will Hayter of Subaru-MarathonMTB.com raced the stage with Kappius-Velonews racer Mike Hogan. These two tangled in 2011 and it was great to see them racing together today.

Will Hayter’s race for Subaru-MarathonMTB.com

Today was a very different day. Rather than smashing it on my own, like the previous six days, I decided that some company would be good. So I joined forces with Team Kappius’ Mike Hogan, who was also riding solo having sadly lost his team-mate Thomas Dooley to a broken collarbone on Stage 1.

This meant venturing back to start chute C, and a ten-minute starting deficit to the leaders. From the front of the group, Mike and I set off pretty fast, and led out the front of the group to the first few corners.

From then on, we mostly had a good deal of fun. There was 1,550m of climbing today, actually quite a lot in the short 54km stage. There were some steep pitches, but from the top of the climb we discovered one of the major drawbacks of starting further back down the field – we found ourselves doing a trackstand competition of sorts on a 45 degree downhill angle on a loose, dusty technical singletrack descent, as the people in front of us walked / staggered / teetered down. Practically sitting on our back wheels, with brakes almost locked up, we were both quite pleased to get down without a dab…

Thereafter it got fast, as the descent widened and flattened out. We overtook plenty of people, but without taking risks. We were coming into the finishing kilometre when the Epic threw us its traditional curve ball – we were cornering past the end of a row of vines at about 40km/h (as my Garmin tells me), when I managed to hook a bar-end round one of the cables holding the end of the row up – almost invisible at that speed. I went down pretty hard, and took a big hit to my left hip. Thankfully I got up pretty fast, and we hobbled to the finish, both happy to have made it.

Two years ago, it was Mike’s and my tangle that ended both our races; this year we both lost our team-mates on the same day (for unrelated reasons), so there is something poetic about finishing the race together. It’s pretty ironic though for me to have stayed upright for almost a full eight days, and then on the day I take it easiest, inside the last kilometre, to hit the deck.

There’ll no doubt be a wrap-up report and better reflections in time; but for now there’s the mixture of relief at it being over, and disappointment that we have to go back to normal life, and can’t pretend to be professional bike racers any more! Oh, and that’s mixed in right now with a considerable amount of discomfort for me – annoying.