![\"ccs-62657-0-45537400-1521732978.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.bikehub.co.za\/production\/uploads\/2023\/02\/ccs-62657-0-45537400-1521732978.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Massimo Debertolis and Ondrej Fojtik of team Wilier Force 7C 2 during stage 4 of the 2018 Absa Cape Epic Mountain Bike stage race from HTS Drostdy in Worcester to Huguenot High School in Wellington, South Africa on the 22nd March 2018. Photo by Andrew McFadden\/Cape Epic\/SPORTZPICS<\/span><\/p>\nWhile Brentjens and Azevedo enjoyed a near-perfect ride into Wellington, Debertolis and Fojtik had to struggle with punctures throughout the stage. Debertolis eventually finished with his tyre cable-tied to the rim after they were finally unable to re-inflate the tyre.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Massimo had the first puncture, normally I would think it was just another flat tyre,\u201d said Fojtik. \u201cBut I think the hole was in the wrong place and it was not easy to repair.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe put air in again and again using gas canisters, and then we used the pump also but it was just a bad day for us.
\u201cThere are three more stages and we will fight for the blue jersey again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The overnight leaders were not the only ones who struggled with punctures. Nic Lamond from team Podium-Today\u2019s Plan also suffered and he and partner Paris Basson had to work extra hard to catch their rivals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ripped a tyre to pieces and had to stop at one of the Scott tech zones and fully change the tyre. We had just caught (George) Hincapie and (Christian) Vande Velde and then had to make up about five minutes on them again.\u201d
The professional road stars Hincapie and Vande Velde are lying fourth in the Dimension Data Masters category with Lamond and Basson four minutes behind them in fifth.<\/p>\n
Lamond said Brentjens and Azevedo broke away from the rest of the group in some tricky sections within the first few kilometres of the stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey got away in the sand. It was so hard to get a rhythm with guys falling all over the place and putting their feet in your spokes \u2026 it was total chaos. There is no momentum to riding like that and so in a group if one team can get away and get some momentum then they can go away and get a nice lead.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Grand Masters category, Rob Sim and Udo Boelts (Robert Daniel) were pleased to reassert their authority after losing a huge chunk of time with mechanical issues on Stage 3 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a hell of a lot better than yesterday,\u201d said Sim with a smile on his face after crossing the line almost ten minutes ahead of second placed Barti Bucher and Hans Juerg Gerber (Meerendal CBC 2), who won Wednesday\u2019s stage. \u201cYesterday, about 500m from the start Udo went through a string of thorns and we used all our bombs trying to reinflate his tyre but too much of the sealant must have also leaked out. We then had to push really hard at the end of yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I was worried my legs would be sore from yesterday but it was fine and we had a great stage today.\u201d
Sim and Boelts are now 19 minutes ahead of Bucher and Gerber with Andrew Mclean and Joel Stransky (Cycle Lab KTM) third, 37 minutes further behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bart Brentjens and Abraao Azevedo (CST Sandd A. Eagle AAZ) made full use of the misfortune of leaders Massimo Debertolis and Ondrej Fojtik (Wilier Force 7C 2) to claim the blue jersey as leaders in the Dimension Data Masters category at the Absa Cape Epic on Thursday. Starting the day, Brentjens and Azevedo \u2013 who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-16077","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\/16077","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=16077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16077"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=16077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}