South African champion Max Knox, feels quietly confident about his chances of success at the 2017 Absa Cape Epic, which starts on Sunday. Knox has spent the past week training around his hometown of Sabie with his Colombian teammate, Leo Paez and feels the pair, who will compete as Team Kansai Plascon, are prepared for the task that awaits them.
By Sean Badenhorst
A total distance of 691km with 15400 metres of vertical ascent over eight days is what 1200 mountain bike racers from around the world will tackle. In hot, dry conditions. The men’s field is loaded with current and former World and Olympic champions and medallists as well as the event’s two male icons, five-time winners, Karl Platt (GER) and Christoph Sauser (SUI).
There’s been much focus on Sauser coming out of retirement to team up again with Jaroslav Kulhavy (CZE) and try to reclaim the coveted title for Specialized, the bike brand that employs them. Close followers of the Cape Epic will agree that Platt’s win last year (with Urs Huber) was against a weakened field (usually the case in an Olympic year). But the Platt and Huber will be eager to crush that notion this year in what is easily the race’s most competitive line-up ever.
Content to remain outside the limelight being cast on the race’s heavyweights, Knox and Paez will start the race relatively fresh, with very limited racing on their respective schedules in the build-up to the Cape Epic.
Both riders possess similar attributes, which is always a bonus in two-rider stage racing. They are both excellent climbers and are both technically strong (Paez is the current Colombian XCO champion and a two-time Olympian). Traditionally, the Cape Epic route hasn’t favoured more purist climbers, but with the 2017 route remaining similar to that of the 2016 edition, which included a high percentage of singletrack, it could well suit the Kansai Plascon pair.
“The more singletrack the better for us. When you have teams with one rider that’s not efficient on singletrack, they have to go the speed of the weaker rider. As riders that are both strong on the climbs and proficient on singletrack, Leo and I are well equipped for this route. I feel that if we have no real bad luck, we’ll be in podium contention,” said Knox.
Although Paez (34) is new to the Cape Epic (this will be his debut), he’s not new to racing against the world’s top mountain bike racers. He won a total of 16 races in 2016, most of them in Europe, and finished fourth at the marathon world championships. He has two marathon world championships bronze medals (2013 and 2015) too.
Knox (29) has started eight Cape Epics. He has three top-10 finishes, with seventh in 2008 (aged 20) his best result. Two of his Cape Epics were ridden in support of five-time winner, Christoph Sauser and his two teammates, Jaroslav Kulhavy (2013) and the late Burry Stander (2012).
Stander, the only South African to have won the Cape Epic, and Knox grew up racing against each other as teenagers. Knox believes he’s reached a stage in his racing career where he has a realistic shot at becoming the second South African to win the Cape Epic.
“I started racing the Cape Epic at quite a young age. I was always on teams where I wasn’t the senior rider. When I rode back-up for Sauser, Burry and Kulhavy, I learned a great deal about the race and what it takes to win it.
“I spent last year racing as a self-supported rider and did not race the Cape Epic. It was one of my best years in terms of marathon race results, winning the national title and the Ashburton Investments National Marathon Series title. I also got married and became a dad. This has changed the way I approach life in general and racing in particular. I feel I’ve gained the right perspective and am channelling all my ability and energy in a way that will help me win important races,” explained Knox, who has shown good form in few short races he did building up to the Cape Epic.
In January, Knox was beaten to the win in a sprint in a 70km marathon race by Sauser. Then in February, Knox beat current Cape Epic champion, Huber, by over six minutes on his way to winning a relatively short, hilly two-day stage race. He was then 12th at the first round of the South African XCO Cup, where he was up to seventh before a slow front wheel puncture saw him drop down the strong field in the second half. In early March, Knox finished third in a four-man sprint at another local marathon race.
Paez, who races mostly in Europe for the Italian Polimedical FRM Bikes team, has been on a Cape Epic training plan since November last year. He has raced just twice in 2017, at a four-day stage race in Spain, where he and his teammate finished sixth and again three weeks ago in Colombia, where he won a marathon distance race.
“Leo is feeling very relaxed and confident. He has good form and has enjoyed training with Max in the mountains around Sabie. They seem to be well matched and it will be interesting to see how they fare at the Cape Epic,” said Paez’s manager, Lory Manzoni.
Knox and Paez are team No. 7 at the Cape Epic and will be chasing the Cannondale Factory Racing (Team No. 8) duo of Manual Fumic (GER) and Henrique Avancini (BRA) around the 26km prologue stage route on Sunday, which is a time-trial format stage. They’ll be wearing Plascon ‘Designed for Life’ branded jerseys, the paint giant’s newly launched campaign.
Michael van Harmelen, Executive Channel Marketing, Plascon, says that the Cape Epic Kansai Plascon team is the ideal way to expose Plascon’s new Designed for Life campaign, both in South Africa and internationally.
“Designed for Life is a campaign that Plascon launched last week and which highlights how people from different walks of life interact daily with Plascon products. It’s a very human-focussed campaign and we believe that the raw human character traits and emotions required to conquer the Absa Cape Epic are very much a part of what we’re appealing to in people with ‘Designed for Life’,” said Van Harmelen.
“Plascon is the premier paint brand in South Africa, so it’s appropriate that our first foray into the mountain bike market is via a top team at the world’s premier mountain bike stage race,” added Van Harmelen.
Knox and Paez will have the support of Kansai Plascon 2, a dedicated back-up team comprising experienced Italians Mirko Pirazzoli and Alessandro Gambino. Back-up teams have become virtually de rigueur for teams with podium ambitions at the Cape Epic and Team Kansai Plascon has ensured that box is ticked.
Team Kansai Plascon may not have been spoken of much as title contenders during the build-up to the 2017 edition of the race, but don’t be surprised to see them move out of the shadows and into the limelight once the race gets underway on Sunday.
Follow their progress online on twitter: @TeamPlascon; and Facebook: Team Kansai Plascon.
TREAD will carry extensive coverage of the 2017 Absa Cape Epic, brought to you by Momsen Bikes. Follow us on twitter: @TreadMTBmag, Facebook: Tread – Mountain Biking with Soul and Instagram: @treadmtb
