Successive Cape Epic stage wins for Buff-Megamo, hat-trick for Ghost Factory

Hans Becking, on his birthday, and Wout Alleman (Buff-Megamo) roared to a second successive win in stage two of the Absa Cape Epic in Tulbagh on Tuesday.

Anne Terpstra and Nicole Koller (Ghost Factory Racing) claimed a hat-trick of stage victories in the Aramex women’s category in the 97km stage that started and finished at Saronsberg Cellar.

Buff-Megamo, after a commanding stage two performance, also moved into the overall lead in the general classification and will wear the yellow leader jerseys from Wednesday.

Ghost Factory Racing, in the women’s overall leaders orange leader jerseys since the prologue, strengthened their grip on first place and are now one minute and 13 seconds ahead of second-placed Cannondale Factory Racing (Candice Lill and Mona Mitterwallner).

Stage two took riders out of Saronsberg Cellar, up the daunting Wagon Trail single-track climb and into the sandy and rocky Witzenberg Valley before returning to Saronsberg via the Wagon Trail descent.

From the start, the main contenders of Buff-Megamo, World Bicycle Relief (Nino Schurter and Sebastian Fini), Toyota-Specialised-NinetyOne (Matt Beers and Howard Grotts) and Orbea Leatt Speed Company (Georg Egger and Lukas Baum) jostled for position to hit the single-track climb in front.

The racing was affected early when Danish rider Fini suffered a puncture.

Repairs did not take long but in a flash Fini and teammate Schurter found themselves behind a stream of riders, forcing them to fight their way through the field.

At about the 90km point they managed to move into second place.

Toyota-Specialised-NinetyOne, Buff-Megamo, Orbea Leatt Speed Company and, for a short while, Wilier Vittoria Factory (Fabian Rabensteiner and Samuele Porro), took advantage of Fini’s misfortune to race ahead.

Alleman and Beers looked like the strongest, most determined riders in the field until Beers suffered a puncture two-thirds into the day’s racing.

Alleman cracked on, as did Speed Company; Wilier Vittoria Factory found the pace too demanding and started to drift back.

It became a two-team race between Buff-Megamo and Speed Company until the 70km point.

The race changed here when Speed Company’s Egger stopped to take in nutrition, allowing Alleman and Becking to push ahead and ride unhindered for the next 27km to claim the stage win and the yellow leader jerseys.

“We felt amazing today, super strong,” Alleman said.

“It was a crazy day — so many things happened but we managed to navigate them all so I’m super happy to get over the line with the win.”

Becking was over the moon with the result.

“It’s such a pleasure to ride with Wout,” he said.

“He was so strong today [Tuesday] that in the last 10km I was shouting, ‘Man, go easy, go easy because the old man is on the limit’.

“It’s my birthday today and we have a yellow jersey, which means we don’t have to wash the clothes this afternoon, which is good.”

The ferocious racing was perhaps summed up best by defending champion Beers, who noted on the finish line: “This isn’t an eight-day race, it’s eight, day races in a row.”

In the women’s category, the race looked at one stage to be between the four top teams — until Efficient Infiniti SCB SRAM (Vera Looser and Alexis Skarda) suffered a mechanical on Wagon Trail, causing them to lose valuable minutes.

For long stretches of the day, the women’s race was a tussle between Ghost Factory Racing, Cannondale Factory Racing and Toyota-Specialised-NinetyOne (Sofia Gomez Villafane and Samara Sheppard), with all six riders taking turns to do the work at the front.

Villafane and Sheppard dropped off the lead going up the final climb of the day, allowing Lill, Mittenwallner, Terpstra and Koller to race down the Wagon Trail descent together.

Lill, having a puncture earlier in the day and then overinflating her tyre, suffered another puncture at the bottom of Wagon Trail.

She decided to trust the “noodle” inside the tyre instead of repairing the puncture, which meant she was unable to race too hard in the closing stages.

This allowed Terpstra and Koller to attack and pull away with about 3km to go, adding further daylight between them and Cannondale Factory Racing in the stage and in the general classification.

Having fallen behind on the descent, Villafane and Sheppard upped their pace on the home stretch and finished strongly to claim third place.

“I thought we paced that stage well,” Terpstra said.

“We knew most of the stage quite well after racing here previously, so we had a good idea of what to expect.

“I must admit, though, I thought the finish was close after the final descent, but we still had quite a bit to ride.”

Koller said: “It was a nice day. A tough day. A hot day. But our planning worked out and we are happy to stay in the orange jerseys.”

Stage three is a 94km trek from Saronsberg Cellar in Tulbagh to Wellington, another region famed for its twisting and turning single-track trails.