Photo credit: Ewald Sadie | Sportzpics<\/span><\/p>\nMorath says of that experience: \u201cI was happy about it, but it also made me hungry for more. Directly after the Cape Epic (I decided I wanted) to come back and finish even better. I got a very good chance to team up together with Ariane. It\u2019s the hardest race I ever did \u2013 anything can happen at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is unequivocal about their ambitions: \u201cEvery stage will be a new challenge and we have to give our best every day. Our goal is the overall win and also stage wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00fcthi points out that there are several teams that will be fighting for the podium, but welcomes this: \u201cI want to win this race against the strongest possible competition \u2026 it is better to win the with a one minute gap than one hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has thrown herself into her preparation with extra vigour this year and is working with a new coach, Denmark\u2019s Thomas Bonne, who also coaches Langvad. L\u00fcthi said she had \u201ca few hiccups\u201d with her preparation but now \u201cI\u2019m back on track and things are going really well\u201d.<\/p>\n
One major change this year \u2013 and yet another indication of the evolution of the Women\u2019s category \u2013 is that L\u00fcthi and Morath will have a support team in Frenchwoman Sabrina Enaux and Belgian Alice Pirard. The latter finished the Cape Epic in 2015 in fifth place, but Enaux will be taking part for the first time. Last year Enaux finished third on the Marathon World Championship and Pirard won Australia\u2019s Crocodile Trophy and her national marathon championship.<\/p>\n
Back up or support teams have become routine in the men\u2019s event and are seen as being key to success: their role is to be on hand to help with mechanical or other issues as the race unfolds. This is the first time a team has been directly recruited to play the role for a women\u2019s team and they might prove to be the difference over eight tough days.<\/p>\n
Morath will be coming to South Africa to ride and train with L\u00fcthi next week and will stay on until after the Cape Epic.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first race will be the Tankwa Trek,\u201d says Morath. \u201cIt\u2019s a good test for Ariane and me on how we work together as a team. And afterwards we can work on things that can be better. I also will have the time to shred some trails and adapt to the hot temperatures compared to the cold at home in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is clearly a fan of the Cape Epic: \u201cIt\u2019s such a huge event which is just perfectly organised. The people there just give you the feeling they love this sport! I also like the stage routes. For me South Africa is perfect place for real mountain biking on nice and challenging trails. I also like the special atmosphere in the Cape Epic race villages.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ariane L\u00fcthi says that replacing Annika Langvad as an Absa Cape Epic partner was an \u201calmost impossible\u201d challenge. Photo credit: Mark Sampson | Sportzpics The L\u00fcthi\/Langvad combination swept aside all Hansgrohe Women\u2019s category challengers for the past three years, but the Danish superstar has decided to return to her studies and will not be able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[76,767,304,24],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-17129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-absa-cape-epic","tag-adelheid-morath","tag-ariane-luthi","tag-cape-epic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129","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=17129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17129"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=17129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a> Photo credit: Mark Sampson | Sportzpics<\/span><\/p>\n