Rene Haselbacher. Photo credit: Ewald Sadie.<\/span><\/p>\nTimes have changed since his days in the pro peloton. \u201cThere is definitely a trend in sport that people are less conservative these days. By that I mean more athletes are using other sports as cross training or even racing\u201d he said in reference to Aleix Espargar\u00f3, who will be racing the Absa Cape Epic between MotoGP events. \u201cIn the past road cyclists never went near a MTB or cross bike. Today so many people use them on a regular basis to keep the boredom out of their job by mixing it up a bit. But not only that, mountain biking and cyclocross has definitely brought road cycling a number of champions of the past fifteen years. Look at Cadel Evans, Dario Cioni, Miguel Martinez, Peter Sagan, Ryder Hesjedal, Marianne Vos, Sven Nys; and most recently Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel. Both of whom are world cross racers and have already made huge impressions on the road. The sports are so different but what we have seen is that any one and every one can enjoy all the disciplines of cycling in fact it should be encouraged. And secondly is that with a bit of real practice world class athletes can make the switch and still be at the top of the game in a new discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haselbacher will aid Hunter in his bid to finish the Absa Cape Epic or perhaps even surprise some of the more fancied Dimension Data Master\u2019s teams. The Austrian, who rode for Gerolsteiner and Astana during his eleven year professional career, splits his time between Austria and South Africa. He has three Absa Cape Epic finishes to his name, but the most recent of those came in 2015. Whether Hunter and Haselbacher will live up to RH77\u2019s #LookProRideSlow or take the racing to the other riders over the age of 40, only time will tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From 2001 until he retired in 2013 there was no better known South African cyclist than Robbie Hunter. The former Rabobank, Phonak and Barloworld sprinter, turned sports agent, took part in sixteen grand tours during his professional career; which started in 1999. He rose to fame however when he made his Tour de France debut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-15572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-cape-epic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15572"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=15572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"ccs-62657-0-68269600-1550496913.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.bikehub.co.za\/production\/uploads\/2023\/02\/ccs-62657-0-68269600-1550496913.jpg\")
<\/a>Robbie Hunter. Photo credit: Graham Watson.<\/span><\/p>\n