It’s a Cape Epic scorcher as Songo teams soar in the heat

YELLOW and orange are increasingly beginning to look like gold as the men’s and women’s leader jersey wearers consolidated their leads in yesterday’s Absa Cape Epic Stage 5 time-trial.

With just two more stages to go the men’s and women’s Investec Songo Specialized teams have built up leads that they should defend comfortably barring serious health or mechanical setbacks.

In a day of soaring temperatures, Czech Jaroslav Kulhavy and Howard Grotts of the US tightened their hold on the men’s category yellow jersey as they added another three minutes to their overall cushion.

On paper the course, with an eye-watering 1 430m of vertical gain, looked to favour the cross-country specialists – more specifically the Cannondale Factory Racing team and Prologue winners, Centurion Vaude.

But Cannondale were the biggest losers of the day, a result of Thursday’s heroic efforts having caught up with them. German Manuel Fumic and Brazilian Henrique Avancini looked out of sorts for most of the route, the latter of whom took tremendous strain on the climbs.

“We rode really hard and took some risks,” said Avancini. “We gave it a shot but had no legs … it is what it is.”

Cannondale would eventually finish in fifth place, and with that result, drop one place to third below Austria’s Alban Lakata and the Czech Republic’s Kristian Hynek (Canyon Topeak) on the general classification.

Hynek said Lakata was making him “suffer” for a large part of the time-trial but he eventually “found my legs”.

Although Canyon Topeak trail Kulhavy and Grotts by over seven minutes, Lakata believes he and Hynek are still in with a shot of winning the Absa Cape Epic: “We are still in it to win it and the next two stages suit us – more climbing, less flats.”

For the first time in the 2018 event there was some doubt about the result in the women’s category for most of the stage. A resurgent Sabine Spitz and Robyn de Groot ( Ascendis Health) led by 31 seconds through halfway and ended up just 12.5 seconds down at the end of the tough ride.

While the margin of victory was small, the Danish multiple World Champion and her young American partner extended their overall lead by two minutes 52 seconds over Annie Last and Mariske Strauss ( Silverback- KMC), who are currently second overall and were third on the stage. – Cape Epic Media Office