![\"\"](\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Christoph-Sauser-LLR.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>There is, he said, much to appreciate about the Tour of Good Hope, which is presented by Scicon and the City of Drakenstein and sanctioned by Cycling South Africa.<\/p>\n
“I love to race in the beautiful Western Cape and there is the speed effect when you ride with a bunch on fast wheels,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Also, it is so well organised and I’m already looking forward to it.”<\/p>\n
Sauser said the Bestmed Tour of Good Hope played an essential part in his preparations as it helped him to work on his speed.<\/p>\n
“Nothing beats riding in a bunch at 40km\/h at a high cadence. It is very good to have this stimulation which you would never get in training.”<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old said that although they essentially a team of mountain bikers, they had riders who could climb and sprint as well.<\/p>\n
“I’m not quite sure about the tactics, but we will have a lot of fire power.<\/p>\n
“We will play it day by day, but it would be nice to win a stage or two again as we did last year with Sam Gaze.”<\/p>\n
The latter won last year’s queen stage – mountain-top finish on Du Toitskloof Pass – before going on to win the U23 world cross country title in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n
Sauser said his personal goal was to do well on the same stage this year.<\/p>\n
He will be supported by Gaze, Simon Andreassen, Konny Looser, Matt Beers, Craig Boyes and Paolo Montoya.<\/p>\n
The 2000 Olympic cross-country bronze medallist, who is based in the small mountain town of Yvorne in Switzerland, announced his retirement from the sport last year.<\/p>\n
However, he could not resist making a comeback when a request came from 2012 Olympic cross country champion Jaroslav Kulhavy to join him for this year’s Cape Epic.<\/p>\n
“I needed some time to think, but the fire for the Cape Epic started to burn again,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The challenge, the goal to win a sixth title and also the chance to raise awareness and inspire the kids of my charity – songo.info – brought me back again.”<\/p>\n
His charity strive to improve the lives of children living in South African townships by providing them with a safe place to play, grow and develop.<\/p>\n
Having won the Epic alongside Kulhavy in 2013 and 2015, Sauser said they would love to make it a third title. He however warned that many teams would be in contention, including that of his German rival Karl Platt, who is also gunning for a record sixth win.<\/p>\n
Sauser, who has been training in South Africa for the past few weeks, showed his power by winning the Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge and National MTB Series opener in successive weeks.<\/p>\n
“After the Tankwa Trek in February I’m going back to Switzerland for two weeks and will return in March for the Tour of Good Hope and a number of other races.”<\/p>\n
More information at www.tourofgoodhope.co.za.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Primarily a mountain biker, Swiss ace Christoph Sauser is ready to make an impact when he competes in the Bestmed Tour of Good Hope cycling race from March 6 to 10. The triple world marathon and five-time Cape Epic champion will compete in the country’s premier road tour for Investec-Songo-Specialized and is eager to reap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1743,1783,2239,1788,1944,2115,2241,1747,1815,1919,1813],"class_list":["post-3728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-asg-events","tag-bestmed","tag-christoph-sauser","tag-cycling-news","tag-mountain-bike","tag-mountain-bike-news","tag-mountain-biker","tag-mtb","tag-mtb-news","tag-tour-of-good-hope","tag-western-cape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}