Cycling / MTB: Nino Schurter and Lars Forster (Scott-SRAM MTB-Racing) underlined their role as favorites in today's prologue of the Cape Epic 2019 and showed the competition the limits. With a lead of 41 seconds, the Swiss duo drove to victory in front of Manuel Fumic and Henrique Avancini (Cannondale Factory Racing). Sergio Gutierrez and Ondrej Cink from KROSS-SPUR came in surprisingly third. In the women's race, Annika Langvad and Anna van der Breggen (Investec-songo-Specialized) won ahead of Ariane Lüthi/Maja Wloszcowska (KROSS-SPUR) and Candice Lill/Adelheid Morath (Summit Fin).
First scent mark set at Cape Epic 2019! After the unfortunate course of last year's race for Olympic champion Nino Schurter, the Swiss MTB ace and his new partner Lars Forster set the course for today's approx. 20km long prologue, which gives way early to victory. With every measurement, the duo was able to further extend the lead over the competition and finally took a whopping 41 seconds across the finish line. Quite a considerable cushion, given the short distance. For a long time, the strongest competition was the South African duo Matt Beers and Alan Hatherly (SpecializedFoundationNAD), before they were slowed down by a flat tire and had to settle for fifth place in the end.
After a somewhat cautious start, Manuel Fumic and Henrique Avancini moved up to second place and were able to underline their very good form. The very good third place of the KROSS-SPUR duo came as a surprise to many. If you now miss the name Kulhavy among the fastest drivers, you have to look a little further back in the classification: last year's two winners, Kulhavy/Gaze from Investec-songo-Specialized, still had the proverbial sand in their gears and did not get past a solid eighth place.
The start went well for the three Team BULLS duos: The BULLS Heroes around Simon Stiebjahn and Urs Huber finished in 14th place, a little more than two minutes behind. A lot was discussed in advance about the new pairing of Epic veteran Karl Platt and newcomer Alban Lakata. Of course, the shortness of today's route didn't exactly suit the two long-distance specialists and so in the end they only finished 23rd - the gap is limited at around 3:20 minutes and tomorrow's stage over 112km offers enough opportunity to make up for it . The youngster duo of the bulls had reason to celebrate; Martin Frey and Simon Schneller achieved a very good 17th place at their second Cape Epic start.
There was also a clear favorite win for the women: Annika Langvad and Anna van der Breggen (Investec-songo-Specialized) almost outclassed the competition and crossed the finish line more than 2 1/2 minutes ahead of their closest pursuers. Sabine Spitz with her new partner Nadine Rieder ended up in a respectable fourth place and the German duo remains within striking distance of the top.
