The Bulls Team of Karl Platt and Stefan Sahm walked away with top honours as overall winners of this year’s exciting Absa Cape Epic presented by adidas. With a four minute and 48 second lead time on Trek-Brentjens (placed second overall) at the start this morning, they crossed the finish line in 4th position today together with the Songo.info team of Christoph Sauser and Burry Stander. They were welcomed by hundreds of enthusiastic spectators who applauded the exhausted teams at the final finish line of this year’s event, hosted at the Lourensford Wine Estate in Somerset-West.
The South African team of Kevin Evans and David George (MTN Energade) finished in 4th place (28:41:00) overall and won the Leader Jersey of Best African Team. Songo.info’s Christoph Sauser and Burry Stander, who set the pace for this year’s race and won 5 of the 7 stages as well as the prologue, finished in 6th place overall (29:08:41) despite a 1hr time penalty.

First to cross the finish line in the Ladies was the Absa Ladies team of Hanlie Booyens and Sharon Laws. They won all of the stages as well as the prologue and completed the race in 37:18:20. They were followed by Robyn Adendorff and Sarah van Heerden (WSP – Jeep Girls) in an overall time of 42:19:45. In third place in an overall time of 43:41:39 were Nolene Saunders and Sarah Wielopolska of the Tread Magazine Ladies team.

Says winner, Hanlie Booyens (Absa Ladies): “We tried to ride as hard as possible in order to compete with the whole field, not only the other ladies. I felt a bit tired the last two days, but Sharon was going strong. I must admit I also enjoyed this year’s route much more than previous years. It was real mountain biking.”

For more race news, go to www.cape-epic.com

In other sports news, the IOC has decided to scrap the Olympic Torch relay. Due to the problems encountered in Beijing last year, from now on the Torch Relay will take place in the host country only.

For more about this see http://www.sport24.co.za/Content/OtherSport/262/3ce84c7b00e44c69add6edb7d0a15a66//IOC_scraps_Olympic_torch_relay

MultiCoach athlete’s have some races looming. First up is the Nelson Mandela Bay World Cup Surf Ski Race on the 10th April. Website address is www.worldseries.zports.co.za  Then it is the Penny Pinchers Plett Easter Race, which is also a World Series race and doubles up as the South African Single Ski Champs on 11th Aril, followed by the SA Double Ski Champs on the Sunday 12th April. It’s going to be great to see how MultiCoach’ers are going to perform, and to see if  the training plan is working.

Winter is approaching here in South Africa, with the early morning sunlight arriving a bit later than normal! Lunch time training is looking like the way forward.
In Mountain Biking news, the Absa Cape Epic is on Stage 5 already, a 111km day with 2233m of climbing. Stage 4 provided much drama, with race leaders Burry Stander and Christof Sauser having mechanical problems and losing their yellow jersey. Follow the race live (and you can track the athletes progress and heart rates) here http://www.cape-epic.com/live/ridertracking.php

That’s all for now. Will post race results as they happen.