Ready, steady, go, and Simone Avondetto and Luca Braidot hit the mark right away in their debut at the Cape Epic, which could hardly have been more exciting. The Wilier-Vittoria MTB Factory Team duo won the prologue of the South African stage race, 26 km with 750 meters of elevation gain and starting and finishing at the Meerendal Wine Estate.
Source: press release
Avondetto and Braidot managed to anticipate the Swiss pair formed by Nino Schurter and Filippo Colombo, and by 1'04” the home team Marc Pritzen and Wessel Botha. Tomorrow, in the first stage of 96 km and 2750 meters of altitude difference, always around the Meerendal Wine Estate, the Piedmontese and the Friulian will be able to show off the yellow jersey of leader of the general classification.
We are really happy, we hoped to get a good result but we went even further. A short stage like the prologue was certainly suited to the characteristics of us specialists in the cross-country and we seized the opportunity well. And to think that we could have done even better without a technical problem that slowed us down. Tomorrow it will be exciting to wear the yellow jersey, but we know that a completely different race will begin. We will still do our best to keep it as long as possible – Simone Avondetto
How nice to start like this. I have to admit that today Simone was really flying, I was a bit more congested but in the end I managed to react well. We managed ourselves very well and we faced a couple of technical problems with great calm and maturity, and also a bit of luck because they could have been more serious. We are aware that the real race starts tomorrow, but in the meantime we can enjoy a beautiful stage in the yellow jersey. An experience that will remain in our hearts – Luke Braidot
VIDEO RECAP
CAPE EPIC PROLOGUE RANKING
| Pos | Team | Rider 1 | Rider 2 | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | WILIER-VICTORY | Luca BRAIDOT | Simone AVONDETTO | 0:59:45 |
| 2. | SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing | Nino SCHURTER | Philip COLOMBO | 1:00:05 |
| 3. | Honeycomb 226ers | Mark PRITZEN | Wessel BOTHA | 1:00:49 |
| 4. | ChemChamp A Funnel | Mark JOUBERT | Tristan NORTJE | 1:00:55 |
| 5. | MitoQ NZ Cycling Project | Craig OLIVER | Well OLIVER | 1:01:00 |
| 6. | ORBEA Leatt Speed Company | Lukas BAUM | Georg EGGER | 1:01:15 |
| 7. | Torpado Kenda FSA 2 | Jakob DORIGONI | Joel DE COSMO | 1:02:04 |
| 8. | Torpado x Singer | Fabian RABENSTEINER | Simon STIEBJAHN | 1:02:06 |
| 9. | Outride | Toyota | Songo | Matthew BEERS | Keegan SWENSON | 1:02:18 |
| 10. | Orbea Air Conditioning | Samuel PORRO | Marc STUTZMANN | 1:02:39 |
