It is with great excitement that I've been following the Epic this week.
At first I was frustrated with the organisation, but today they redeemed themselves. The Cape Epic is one of only a few sports that offers the same prize money for both the men's and women's divisions and also introduced a start batch for the women from this year. The legendary Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesjaa and Sally Bigham campaigned for a women's batch last year. It is just fair to give the women their own start batch especially when you consider that they women do earn the same prize money.
This year the ladies are also not allowed to draft in the slipstreams of any of the Men's teams as they might get penalised.
The first two stages were really frustrating to watch as the Cape Epic interviewed the men's winners in the final kilometres before the finish of the women. The result was that we missed both deciding moves that determined the outcome of Stage 1 & 2. The fact that the men's race were broadcasted live via the 360 view, Project Zebra made it more disappointing. Project Zebra, a 360 live view from the field was made possible by Team Bulls. Stefan Sahm an ex-pro rider for Team Bulls is riding an e-bike and following riders around on each stage.
Stage 3 however made up for the lack of live feed from Stage 1 & 2. We had a helicopter following the ladies for the last 7 km of the 104km long stage from Tulbach to Wellington. We were able to see how Team Spur made their final move, Team Topeak Ergon were giving it their all and we saw how the elastic started to snap for Jennie Stenerhag.
The women's race is heating up! Annika Langvad & Ariane Kleinhans didn't have an easy ride to get in the lead, the competition is tough this year and the change in race format has definitely made this category a more even playing field and a whole lot more fun to watch. The change in format has brought in the game of cat & mouse playing a bit and getting athletes to push their boundaries.
Today they interviewed, Sabine Spitz, multiple World and Olympic champion. She is in her 40's and still racing at the top end of the field with the hope of qualifying for her 4th Olympics in the Summer. She is racing with the 23 year old Yana Balamoyna from the Ukraine who rides for Bart Brentjes' team. They are using the Epic as training for their World Cup season.
Jennie Stenerhag collapsed after the Finish Line and had to abondon the race. This is such sad news as the team won both the Prologue and Stage 1 of this year's Epic and they were in the best shape of their careers.
British Cross country champion, Sally Bigham is hungry for a victory with Adelheid Morath and rode their hearts out today, but was 39 seconds off the pace. Watch this pair over the next 4 days as they are for sure going to try and shake things up for Team Spur.
I would like to end this post with a quote from Sabine Spitz during her interview today, "If something makes you weak, it makes you stronger afterwards."
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