Kristian Hynek of Topeak Ergon Racing leads the chasing group during stage 4. \/\/ Photo by Nick Muzik\/Cape Epic\/SPORTZPICS<\/span><\/p>\nSauser said he had been \u201cworried about this stage \u2026 there are very sharp rocks and you have to be careful\u201d. He added that there had also been a lot of thorns on the course: \u201cAt one stage I could see more thorns in my tyre than tyre.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sauser and Kulhavy generally rode conservatively and to protect the yellow jersey on the day: \u201cEvery day wearing the yellow is like winning a break point in tennis and today was another set won,\u201d smiled Sauser.<\/p>\n
Hynek and Lakata remain in second place overall, with Spain\u2019s Jose Hermida and Dutch partner Rudi van Houts (Multivan Merida) in third. Four time winner Karl Platt of Germany and Swiss partner Urs Huber are fourth after losing another two minutes to the leading teams on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Lakata said they had been happy with second \u201cbut we want to be more happy and win a stage\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to put the Specialized guys under pressure \u2026 but unfortunately it didn\u2019t work,\u201d said Lakata.<\/p>\n
Hynek and Lakata are both good climbers and might fancy their chances of closing the gap on Thursday\u2019s 117km route from Worcester to Wellington, which includes some extended climbs.<\/p>\n
Buys and Beukes\u2019s heroics put them ahead of the rest of the other teams from the continent and into the Absa African special jersey. Darren Lill and Waylon Woolcock (RED-E Blend) had been leading the race for the jersey before the stage but lost more than eight minutes on the Scott pair. They are now two minutes behind them in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
Stage Results<\/h2>\n
1. Scott Factory Racing 7-1 Philip Buys (South Africa) 7-2 Matthys Beukes (South Africa) 4:19.19,0<\/p>\n
2. Topeak Ergon 1-1 Kristian Hynek (Czech Republic) 1-2 Alban Lakata (Austria) 4:22.50,5 +3.31,5<\/p>\n
3. Investec-Songo-Specialized 2-1 Christoph Sauser (Switzerland) 2-2 Jaroslav Kulhavy (Czech Republic) 4:22.50,6 +3.31,6<\/p>\n
Overall Results<\/h2>\n
1. Investec-Songo-Specialized 2-1 Christoph Sauser (Switzerland) 2-2 Jaroslav Kulhavy (Czech Republic) 19:05.20,4<\/p>\n
2. Topeak Ergon 1-1 Kristian Hynek (Czech Republic) 1-2 Alban Lakata (Austria) 19:12.42,2 +7.21,8<\/p>\n
3. Multivan Merida 6-1 Jose Hermida (Spain) 6-2 Rudi van Houts (Netherlands) 19:18.05,9 +12.45,5<\/p>\n
4. Bulls 4-1 Karl Platt (Germany) 4-2 Urs Huber (Switzerland) 19:20.10,9 +14.50,5<\/p>\n
5. Novus OMX Pro 23-1 Martin Gujan (Switzerland) 23-2 Fabian Giger (Switzerland) 19:49.31,3 +44.10,9<\/p>\n
6. Meerendal Centurion Vaude 5-1 Jochen Kaess (Germany) 5-2 Daniel Geismayr (Austria) 19:52.48,0 +47.27,6<\/p>\n
7. Scott Factory Racing 7-1 Philip Buys (South Africa) 7-2 Matthys Beukes (South Africa) 19:53.09,7 +47.49,3<\/p>\n
8. RED-E Blend 36-1 Darren Lill (South Africa) 36-2 Waylon Woolcock (South Africa) 19:55.14,8 +49.54,4<\/p>\n
9. USN #1 11-1 Rourke Croeser (South Africa) 11-2 Travis Walker (South Africa) 20:03.07,5 +57.47,1<\/p>\n
10. EAI South Africa 33-1 Gawie Combrinck (South Africa) 33-2 Johann Rabie (South Africa) 20:08.08,6 +1:02.48,2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africans Philip Buys and Matthys Beukes notched up the first South African win in the 2015 Absa Cape Epic after an audacious early break on Wednesday\u2019s rugged 111km Stage 4. The looped route \u2013 starting and finishing in Worcester \u2013 included some back-breaking climbs and rocky surfaces, giving rise to many tyre problems throughout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[76,24,703,54,3794],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-20315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-absa-cape-epic","tag-cape-epic","tag-matthys-beukes","tag-philip-buys","tag-scott-factory-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315","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=20315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20315"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=20315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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