The great moment of form continues for Simone Avondetto e Luke Braidot to the Cape Epic 2025. The couple of the Wilier-Vittoria MTB Factory Team, after having conquered the initial prologue with a masterly performance, gave important confirmations in the first stage in line, which ended at 2 th, beaten by just 31” by the Swiss pair formed by Nino Schurter and Filippo Colombo.
Source: Wilier press release
in this 92 km and 2750 meters of altitude difference of the stage with departure and arrival at Meerendal Wine Estate, Avondetto and Braidot honored the yellow jersey in style, always remaining in control and then launching a decisive attack in the last quarter of the race. The only ones who managed to respond were Schurter and Colombo who, in the end, had a little more and went on to take the stage and also the yellow jersey, snatching it from the Italians by just 11”.
There was a lot of headwind today, so it turned out to be a fairly tactical race. Wearing the yellow jersey, we didn't hold back from racing when we needed to accelerate. We tried in the last 15 km, but the Swiss were stronger in the very last part of the stage, when I found myself with an empty tank. I would say that we can still be very satisfied with our performance. – Luke Braidot
It was a great battle, we just missed a little bit in the final but that's okay. The start of this Cape Epic was really exciting, it was hard to imagine such a positive debut. However, everyone says that the real race starts on Thursday, when the fatigue will start to be felt, so we'll see how our body reacts to all these efforts. Tomorrow's time trial? We'll fit a bigger chainring, and we'll have to be as aerodynamic as possible, given that there will be several flat sections – Simone Avondetto
In fact, tomorrow a show will be staged stopwatch pretty fast from Meerendal Wine Estate a Fairview, Paarl, 66km with 950m elevation gain. Avondetto and Braidot are now in second place in the overall standings, only 11” behind the Swiss pair. In 3rd place, at 3’14”, is the German pair formed by Lukas Baum and Georg Egger.
ITALIANS IN THE RACE
Excellent performances from the other all-Italian team, namely Torpado Kenda FSA, which with Jakob Dorigoni and Gioele De Cosmo placed 6th. 4th place for Samuele Porro, paired with the Swiss Marc Stutzmann, and 5th place for Rabensteiner, paired with the German Simon Stiebjahn.
LIVE
STAGE 1 RANKING
| 1. | SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing | Nino SCHURTER | Philip COLOMBO | 3:51:03 |
| 2. | WILIER-VICTORY | Luca BRAIDOT | Simone AVONDETTO | +31 |
| 3. | ORBEA Leatt Speed Company | Lukas BAUM | Georg EGGER | + 2: 04 |
| 4. | Orbea Air Conditioning | Samuel PORRO | Marc STUTZMANN | + 2: 40 |
| 5. | Torpado x Singer | Fabian RABENSTEINER | Simon STIEBJAHN | + 2: 50 |
| 6. | Torpado Kenda FSA 2 | Jakob DORIGONI | Joel DE COSMO | + 5: 02 |
| 7. | Outride | Toyota | Songo | Matthew BEERS | Keegan SWENSON | + 5: 14 |
| 8. | ChemChamp A Funnel | Mark JOUBERT | Tristan NORTJE | + 5: 59 |
| 9. | BULLS Mavericks | Simon SCHNELLER | Axel ROUDIL-CORTINAT | + 6: 16 |
| 10. | MEGAMO BUFF 1 | Wout ALLEMAN | Martin STOSHEK | + 7: 52 |
