There is life after the Epic

THIS week's column is a bit of a mish-mash of things, with a look forward to the races coming up for KZN riders as well as a few final thoughts on the Absa Cape Epic.

Although I was tempted to go with an April Fool's joke, I have opted not to, so you can trust everything that follows – after the cabinet reshuffle, I lost my enthusiasm for humour (think how much bikes are going to cost once the rand / dollar settles). Let's start with the Epic ... By now you know about the Scott train that claimed so much glory at the Epic: 1st overall with Nino Schurter and Matthias Stirnemann; first women with Jennie Stenerhag and Esther Süss; and first mixed with Jenny Rissveds and Thomas Frischknecht, but it will be interesting to see how that tranfers to sales in South Africa. If ever there was a perfect marketing opportunity then it was now for Scott in South Africa, although I tend to think those three teams could have been riding just about any bikes (even Specialized) and they would still have won.

What you may not know is that the 2018 Epic Early Bird entries went within a few seconds, and within about 20 seconds over 1 000 entries had been received (100 entries are made available at 3pm the day after the race finishes on a fastest-fingerfirst basis – or fastest internet connection first – and the rest are via a lottery or, for UCI pros, via a wildcard entry).

And that is despite (what I consider to be) an eye-watering price of R74 900 for a team of two (or R4 681.25 per person per day of riding – imagine if a one-day race charged you R2 000 for a day's racing and R2 000 for a night in a tent, would you enter?).

But once again, despite that, I say the Epic is not over-priced. I am pretty sure any economist will tell you that if your product is being oversubscribed to such an extent, and being sold out within seconds of going on sale, then you are under charging (just don't tell the Epic that). What else came out from the Epic: Christoph Sauser has retired, but what was even more interesting was some of his views. In an interview this week he said he has seen a change in the racing style at the Epic.

“I think this year has shown that the dynamic of the Cape Epic has changed. Previously you could go slow and warm up in the first hour, but this year it has been full on for the first hour of the race. You needed to ride really hard as there was no let up. Going forward, I think we will see faster starts now and riders will have to change the way they train, focussing more on speed and cutting back on long hours as the race start gets closer,” Sauser predicted.

Will he be back to take on the likes of Cadel Evans and George Hincapie or Bart Brentjens and Abraao Azevedo in the Masters category? “No” was the simple answer. “Maybe, I’ll ride it with a friend. But to do interval training to win the Masters category… I won’t do that.”

Of the 14 Absa Cape Epics, Sauser has competed in 13, finished 12, won five, finished outside of the podium four times and occupied the second step three times.

With Stellenbosch hosting the opening round of the UCI Mountain Biking World Cup in 2018, the weekend before the Absa Cape Epic gets underway, all indications are that more cross-country stars will line up for next year’s race than ever before.

Hill 2 Hill

There is just two weeks to go until the Compendium Hill 2 Hill. There are some big changes for the 100km race on Saturday, April 15. The route will now be starting within Pietermaritzburg at Alexandra Park with some extra distance added at around the new 25km mark to make up for the lost distance from the start to Alexandra Park.

Course designer Nick Floros is looking to provide some fun mountain biking as a replacement. It should make for a for more interesting ride.

The Hill 2 Hill is the next leg of the Roag Series and last weekend the Holla Sugar Rush was the second leg. After 45km of sublime riding on a mix of some of the best sections of the various Holla Trails' routes in Ballito, Julian Jessop and Stuart Marais were still locked together in the race for the men’s title.

Jessop managed to get his wheel in front and take the victory, but Marais maintains his top position in the race for the R25 000 first prize in the Quattro ROAG Series.

After two legs of the Quattro Series, Marais has 186 points from his victory at Wartburg last month and the second place at Holla. That gives him a solid 44-point cushion ahead of David Low before the Compendium Hill 2 Hill.

In the women’s race, the experienced Natalie Bergstrom just managed to edge out Christie Leigh Hearder in their sprint and claim a victory which also saw her move to the top of the women’s standing of the ROAG Series, with Hearder now also moving up a position to second.