cycling: Cape Epic Stage #1: Schurter/Forster on their own level to victory

Cycling / MTB: Directly with the first stage after yesterday's prologue, the longest stage of this year was on the program for the starters at Cape Epic. Like yesterday, the 112km showed that victory in 2019 went solely to the Scott-Sram duo Nino Schurter / Lars Forster. The two Swiss dominated the action again and took many minutes from the competition. Second place went to the two Cannondale boys Avancini and Fumic, with a strong final sprint, Team BULLS Legends Alban Lakata and Karl Platt secured third place. The women's favorites also cheered again: Annika Langvad and Anna van der Breggen from Investec-songo-Specialized again took several minutes away from the competition.

After the careful scanning of yesterday's prologue, things got really serious for the first time at the Cape Epic 2019. The 112km long stage around Hermanus is one of the most difficult daily sections of this year's race and certainly lived up to the reputation. After a very hectic initial phase, after about 65km a leading group emerged for the first time. In addition to the two overall leaders Schurter/Forster, their closest pursuers Avancini/Fumic and last year's winner duo Kulhavy/Gaze, who were surprisingly weak in the prologue, also drove in it. As the race progressed, however, it became increasingly clear how great the superiority of Olympic champion Nino Schurter and his new partner Lars Forster is today. Avancini and Fumic were able to keep up the longest, but about 20km from the finish the Cannondale riders also had to give up. When the national XC champions from Brazil and Germany crossed the finish line, they were 2:51 behind Scott-Sram.

The Investec-songo-Specialized team had a day to forget: Sam Gaze, who was promisingly placed in the leading group, fell first, and a short time later cleat problems at Kulhavy ruined the race to catch up. Given the circumstances, sixth place almost seems like a success, even though they are now more than six minutes behind the overall leaders. Things went much better for Alban Lakata and Karl Platt. The BULLS Legends team persistently rewound their performance in the first chasing group - the great experience of the two was reflected in the constant pacing, which brought the two veterans third place after a considerable final sprint. The equally good fourth place of Simon Stiebjahn and Urs Huber caused even more celebrations in the Bulls' camp.

Similar to the men, there is also a dominating team for the women: Annika Langvad and Anna van der Breggen from Investec-songo-Specialized set an enormous pace right from the start and drove away from all the competition. In the end, the gap to the two pursuers from Kross-Spur was more than three minutes. Like yesterday, Adelheid Morath finished third with her partner Candice Lill. Sabine Spitze and Nadine Rieder have a bad day: Although they end up in fifth place, the duo loses more than 15 minutes to the top.

Cape Epic 2019: Result Stage #1 Men

Cape Epic 2019: Result of stage #1 women

Cape Epic 2019: Men's standings after stage #1

Cape Epic 2019: Women's standings after Stage #1