Ariane Kleinhans and Annika Langvad won their second Absa Cape Epic title in Meerendal today when they ended their dominating display in this year’s race with yet another stage win.
The Team RECM Specialized pair suffered a minor blip during stage two when they received a time penalty, but were able to make up the lost time within one day.
Annika Langvad (R) and Ariane Kleinhans (L) on their way to victory during the final stage (stage seven) of the 2015 Absa Cape Epic. Photo: Sam Clark/Cape Epic/SPORTZPICS
Kleinhans and Langvad finished today’s final stage in a time of 4:06:53, seven minutes and 22 seconds ahead of Ascendis Health’s Jennie Stenerhag and Robyn de Groot.
SasolRacing’s Yolande de Villiers and Janka Keseg Stevkova rounded out the stage seven podium places.
“We are very happy,” said Langvad.
“This is such a special moment – defending our title, winning again with Ariane and being able to celebrate the victory on my birthday.”
Kleinhans said it was another tough day on the bike, before admitting that she was slightly surprised by the margin of victory.
“We always wanted to defend our title, but when we saw the quality in the field we didn’t know what to expect. Everything just went so smoothly for us.”
RECM Specialized’s team manager Kandice Buys says both women started preparing for the Epic a year in advance, so winning so convincingly is the happy culmination of preparation and intense focus.
Earlier in the day, the entire field left Wellington with 92km still to ride to Meerendal before completing the 2015 Absa Cape Epic.
The major obstacle of the day was a climb up the Paardeberg, a 6km trek that broke the spirit of many finishers, though perhaps not as much as the final climb up Meerandal’s Dorstberg.
Jennie Stenerhag, who had raced at the limit all week, said the new stage seven could be the toughest ever.
“I thought we were almost done,” said Stenerhag. “I said to Robyn, ‘we must go down now’. We then just kept climbing. It was a brutal last day.”
In their debut Cape Epic as a team, Ascendis Health achieved more than they expected.
“We were originally aiming for a top 5 finish,” said Stenerhag, “so finishing second is brilliant. Congratulations to Annika and Ariane though. Those ladies are something else.”
In an interesting quirk of the race, Sasol’s sponsorship of the Sasol Women’s category will see Kleinhans and Langvad take home more prize money than the men.
For their first place win the pair walk away with R200 000. They also win an extra R5000 for the Prologue and per stage win (seven this year), and they receive R15 000 for each of the Sasol Women’s Hotspots that they won (three this year).
In the final overall standings, it’s RECM Specialized in first, Ascendis Health in second and SasolRacing’s Yolande de Villiers and Janka Keseg Stevkova in third.
