Becking and Alleman bag second Epic stage victory in two days

It was same-old at the Cape Epic on Tuesday with the Buff-Megamo team of Hans Becking and Wout Alleman flying to a second stage victory in two days.

The win — on Becking’s birthday — sent the team to the overall lead in the men’s section while in the women’s category Anne Terpstra and Nicole Koller (Ghost Factory Racing) claimed a hat-trick of stage victories.

The 97km stage that included 2,200m of climbing started and ended at Saronsberg Cellar in Tulbagh. It took the field up the daunting Wagon Trail single-track climb and into the sandy and rocky Witzenberg Valley before returning via the Wagon Trail descent.

Terpstra and Koller strengthened their grip on first place and now sit 1 min 13 sec ahead of second-placed Cannondale Factory Racing (Candice Lill and Mona Mitterwallner).

From the start, the main contenders of Buff-Megamo, World Bicycle Relief (Nino Schurter and Sebastian Fini), Toyota-Specialized-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 didn’t 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 this stage, Alleman and Beers looked like the strongest riders in the field, until Beers suffered a puncture two-thirds into the day’s racing. Alleman cracked on.

“We felt amazing today, just super strong,” said Alleman. “It was a crazy day though — so many things happened but we managed to navigate them all, so I’m super happy to get over the line with the win.”

Ferocious racing

“It’s just such a pleasure to ride with Wout,” said Becking. “He was so strong today that in the last 10km, I was shouting, ‘Man, go easy, go easy, because the old man is on the limit.’”

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 breakdown on the Wagon Trail, causing them to lose valuable minutes.

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.

However Terpstra and Koller attacked and pulled away with 3km to go, adding more daylight between them and Cannondale Factory Racing on 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 on the day.

“I thought we paced that stage very well,” said Terpstra. “We knew most of the stage quite well after racing here previously, so we had a very good idea of what to expect.”