Leading teams extend Epic lead

THE Bulls and Spur-Specialized continued their charge towards winning the Cape Epic after the fourth stage into Wellington yesterday.

Karl Platt and Urs Huber, the German-Swiss combination of the Bulls, opened their lead to nine minutes and 44 seconds at the head of the men’s elite field, while Annike Langvad and Ariane Kleinhans are now almost 13 minutes ahead with three stages left.

Italians Samuele Porro and Damiano Ferraro (Trek-Selle San Marco) took a deserved win on a 73km stage that favoured the cross-country riders. They have impressed in their first Epic, and are now third overall, with Swiss-German team Nicola Rohrbach and Matthias Pfrommer (Centurion Vaude by Meerendal Two) in second. There was bad luck for Topeak Ergon, who had been favoured to push the Bulls hard, as they had to pull out yesterday after Kristian Hynek crashed and injured his elbow some 5km from the finish of the third stage on Wednesday.

“We started easy and decided not to push too hard,” said Porro. “When we got to the third water point – 25km before the end – we decided to push harder. We managed to get a gap and we just went. We came to the Epic just to get experience – and now we are on the podium. It’s unbelievable.”

Second was the Bulls back-up team, Germans Simon Stiebjahn and Tim Boehme, some 1:11 back, while the Dutch pair of Rudi van Houts and Hans Becking (CST Superior) got some reward with third place after some bad luck in the opening days of the race.

“The Epic is never easy, especially today with lots of climbs - we were going up and down all day, but there was lots of singletrack too,” said Platt. “I’m very happy for Simon and Tim finishing on the podium today. They trained with us every day before the Epic and they’re getting stronger and stronger too. Maybe before the end of the week they’ll get a stage win too.”

Langvad-Kleinhans pipped Ukrainian-German team Yana Belomoina and Sabine Spitz (Team Sport for Good) for the victory in the women’s category by just five seconds yesterday to win their third stage. The two teams had a ding-dong battle for most of the stage, finally breaking away from a large women’s racing group. Topeak Ergon’s Sally Bigham and Adel Morath were third.

“Today was slightly less painful,” said Kleinhans. “Annika is such a great partner. Today’s stage was really about teamwork and she was really awesome and made the difference when we dropped Topeak Ergon. Then, it was really great racing with Sport for Good. Coming into the finish, which was a little bit different to yesterday, she was motor-pacing me.”

South Africans Waylon Woolcock and Darren Lill (USN Purefit) are now over 16 minutes ahead in the African special jersey category with Gawie Combrinck and Nico Bell (NAD Pro MTB) in second. – Kevin McCallum