The Cape Cycle tour
The Cape Town Cycle Tour is many things to many levels of rider — all of them fun, writes Kevin McCallum
Ahead of the 2015 international cycling season, Belgium’s Etixx-Quickstep team management met with their owner and main sponsor to plan the year ahead. They’d had a heck of a 2014. With three former world champions in a squad of superstars, they’d taken 56 victories around the world, including three stages at the Tour de France. They had Mark Cavendish, the world’s fastest sprinter, at his peak. Other teams looked at them with envy and longing. At that meeting the management asked owner Zdenek Bakala what races he would like them to target in 2015. Milan-San Remo? Paris Roubaix? A win on the Champs-Élysées at the Tour de France by Cavendish? A fourth world time trial world championship for Tony Martin? Bakala did not hesitate: “I want us to win the Cape Town Cycle Tour.” Silence. Er … the what? The Cape Town Cycle Tour. The largest timed cycling race in the world. It’s the second weekend in March.
Oh, and Bakala wanted Cavendish to ride it. That might be a problem, said management. Cavendish could be difficult, might not want to fly all the way to the bottom of Africa. Bakala, a businessman who’s made billions by refusing to be told what can’t be done, insisted. Cavendish, with 30 stage victories at the Tour de France, the first person to win the iconic final Tour stage on the Champs-Élysées four years in a row, faced the best South Africa had to offer for the race they call the Fun Ride World Champs.
Bakala had fallen for the magic of the Cycle Tour. A frequent visitor to the Western Cape, he has kept a home there for many years and was a regular participant in the tour. In 2011 he bought the Klein Constantia wine estate, which is now a partner with the Cycle Tour. By bringing in Cavendish he added to the long, rich history of a race that’s one of the most successful failures of any sporting event in the world.
The race began in 1978 as a protest ride, with 446 riders hoping to push authorities on the need for designated cycle lanes in Cape Town. The failure of this grand event is that as the race prepares for its 42nd running, cycle paths in the city’s CBD are used as loading bays and cyclists still struggle to find a safe space. It’s an ongoing battle but the Cycle Tour remains one of the world’s great celebrations of cycling.
About 35,000 will ride on Sunday, March 8, around the peninsula on a route that’s changed little over the years. The start was moved to the Grand Parade a few years ago, just a street away from that first start in 1978. It is a nonstop, 109km rolling day of joy, a race for those who need to race and a ride on closed, safe roads for the rest.
It was called the Argus after the newspaper that was its first sponsor. It kept adding sponsors and after being called the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Momentum Cycle Tour it was shortened to Cape Town Cycle Tour. It’s tough but not as tough as some say. The climb up Edinburgh Drive is a rocking party from well before Cape Town pubs are open. A garage band wails hard in Kalk Bay. Chapman’s Peak is as beautiful as it is painful on the legs. Suikerbossie is a soulful slog. The finish in Green Point is a high.
In 2015 the race had to be shortened after the fires that devastated the Western Cape affected parts of the route. Riders were turned around at the end of the M3 to head back the way they came for a 47km jaunt. Some, including this writer, did one of their slowest rides, spending almost five hours on the road after a stop at the Forries pub on the way back to top up fuel for the final climb from Hospital Bend. Cavendish didn’t have time to stop. He barely had time to warm up before he was sprinting for the line. He didn’t win. Bakala probably didn’t care. He had got one of the greatest riders of all time to take part in the Fun Ride World Champs, perhaps the grandest ride of them all.
McCallum will be riding his 16th or 17th Cycle Tour this year. He forgets how many he has taken part in