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The pretenders eventually fell by the wayside, leaving\u00a0Toyota-Specialized-NinetyOne, SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing,\u00a0ORBEA x Leatt x Speed Company,\u00a0and\u00a0Wilier Pirelli Factory\u2019s Fabian Rabensteiner and Wout Alleman alone in the front.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With a flat start, a tough middle section punctuated by two big climbs, and an undulating final 30km, there was little margin for error. Blevins, having recovered well from his Stage 1 ailment, pushed the pace, but no one was able to make a clean break for victory as the well-matched teams kept each other in check.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wilier Pirelli fell back at 92km, and at around 100km,\u00a0ORBEA x Leatt x Speed Company\u00a0started to struggle. First, they ran out of water, then they had a slight collision in the sand, followed by a stick in the derailleur. The minor incidents stacked up, forcing them to drop off and chase back repeatedly. The mishaps allowed the final 10km to turn into a two-team race between SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing and\u00a0Toyota-Specialized-NinetyOne.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Schurter led into the final singletrack, but as the two teams popped out onto the tar home stretch, Matt Beers mashed his monstrous legs and raced away. Frischknecht attempted to follow, but it was Blevins who had the energy to chase and ultimately rode home comfortably alongside his\u00a0Toyota-Specialized-NinetyOne\u00a0partner for the Stage 2 win.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWith Andri and Nino you can\u2019t get past them in the singletrack so I knew we had to do it on the tar. I also can\u2019t sprint, so the tar was our best shot,\u201d said Beers.\u00a0\u201cChris told me to send a flyer when we hit the road; I did and it worked out really well. You can\u2019t ask for more.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Blevins added that the stage win was a confidence booster.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s very motivating to bounce back with a stage win after a day like yesterday. It\u2019s still a long week and there is a lot of racing to come, but we are happy for now!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the CM.com Women\u2019s category, the three top teams raced together all day. They were joined for a short while by a handful of other women\u2019s teams, but their class told as the day wore on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With Amy Wakefield recovering from late-night surgery to her arm injury and dealing with a lack of sleep, the onus was on Sofia Gomez Villafane and Katerina Nash (NinetyOne-Songo-Specialized) or Efficient Infiniti Insure to attack at some stage. For Wakefield and Lill, the aim was always to ride defensively on the day and make sure no team was able to eat into their overall lead.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On a stage that featured few opportunities for decisive moves, the three women\u2019s teams couldn’t be separated. Looser and Le Court eventually made the killer move with 5km to go, though Looser misjudged her attack slightly, thinking she only had a kilometre or two left of the racing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Le Court, initially stuck behind NinetyOne-Songo-Specialized, was eventually able to chase down her partner and the pair raced away to give the all-African combo a deserved stage victory.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a little step over this bridge,\u201d said Looser.\u00a0\u201cIt could almost have been stairs; I rode over and I saw that Sofia stopped for a second and had to dismount. I thought\u00a0\u2018now is my chance\u2019\u00a0and just put my head down knowing that Kim could sprint away from them and catch me. I saw a sign and was hoping that it said\u00a02km or 1km to go, then I saw that it said 5km to go and I thought\u00a0\u2018no, my legs.\u2019\u00a0Then I looked back and saw Kim. I was very happy that she was there!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Le Court added,\u00a0\u201cI put in the attack and saw they couldn\u2019t catch me. I caught Vera and thought I was going to throw up\u2026 but I held on to the end, burning to the finish. We are thrilled to win. It was a great day.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wakefield and Lill were satisfied with their ride, happy to not lose any time in the overall lead.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m feeling\u00a0\u2018okay\u2019,\u201d said Wakefield, after the injury and surgery on Monday night.\u00a0\u201cI won\u2019t lie, I felt every bump and I\u2019m pretty sore. But it is what it is and I had to take it to get through the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lill was slightly more impressed with her partner, labelling her a superwoman.\u00a0\u201cAmy is amazing,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cIt was a good race today, tight and tactical. We raced hard in parts and took it easier in other parts. It was a long day, but we’re still in Orange. That\u2019s where we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tune in to Stage 3 of the Absa Cape Epic live\u00a0broadcast from 08:30 on Wednesday 22 March on the\u00a0Absa Cape Epic Facebook page<\/a>\u00a0or the\u00a0Epic\u00a0Series YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2023 Absa Cape Epic Stage 2 Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Men\u2019s category:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n CM.com Women\u2019s category:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2023 Absa Cape Epic General Classification After Stage 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Men\u2019s category:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n CM.com Women\u2019s category:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n View the full Stage 2 results\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cape Town, South Africa (21 March 2023) \u2013\u00a0There were no changes in the overall category leads of the Absa Cape Epic after Stage 2, with both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s leaders holding on to their yellow and orange leader jerseys respectively, after 116km of racing on Tuesday, 21 March. In the Men\u2019s race, Matt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[9196,9209,2206],"class_list":["post-50166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-absa","tag-absa-cape-epic","tag-cape-epic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50166","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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