Scott team keep lead
The all-Swiss pairing of ScottSRAM MTB-Racing won the 111km Stage 1 of the 2019 Absa Cape Epic in emphatic fashion on Monday.
Nino Schurter and Lars Forster finished in a time of 04:24:04 to extend their overnight lead to 3.33 over Manuel Fumic and Henrique Avancini of Cannondale Factory Racing, who finished second.
The Team BULLS Legends outfit of Alban Lakata and fivetime champion Karl Platt rounded out the podium.
“I’m very happy with the win,” Schurter said shortly after the finish on another cloudy and cool day which made for fast racing.
“It was a good day out. “I hurt a bit toward the end, but now we have time to recover for tomorrow,” he said.
Jaroslav Kulhavy and Sam Gaze of Investec-songo-Specialized crossed the line at Hermanus High School in the chasing bunch not too far behind, to limit their losses and climb up to third place.
The battle between the front two teams was fierce.
A group of about 20 riders, featuring all the top contenders, stayed together until the Dimension Data Hot Spot at 37km in.
From there, the bunch began to split apart after ScottSRAM MTB-Racing (who took the hot spot) pushed the pace.
Cannondale Factory Racing were able to stay in the mix, as were Investec-songo-Specialized, one of the Trek Selle San Marco outfits, Canyon and the two senior BULLS teams.
By about 70km, Scott-SRAM MTB-Racing and Cannondale Factory Racing had opened a gap on the chasing teams, and soon afterwards Scott-SRAM MTB-Racing went out alone.
“Everyone in the bunch was a bit nervous and it was hectic in the beginning, then the racing really started, ” Fumic said.
“Scott was playing a few games and we didn’t really want to get involved in that,” he said.
“We kept riding consistently. “It’s a long week and you need to be strong at the end.”
Tuesday’s Stage 2 promises to take even more out of the riders with some 2,250m of climbing over the 90km from Hermanus to Oak Valley.
‘Everyone in the bunch was a bit nervous and it was hectic in the beginning, then the racing really started’