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Launched at the Gala evening the route with 966km and
over 18000m of climbing including the extra prologue day
is going to be one serious ride. The footage shown had
images of climbs, rocks sand and awesome scenery showed
just enough to alert the scenes, but not enough to scare
you off.
Introducing the new route Kevin Vermaak said the
intention was not to make it harder every year, but rather
to go to new places in the Western Cape. To show off the
spectacular scenery the route had to be stretched a bit to
include some new technical and challenging sections. He
said that history had shown more and more riders finishing
the race every year, so to continue the trend this year
and extra bit of training would be required.
The 2008 race route is as follows:
Prologue: 17km 310m in the Pezula estate
Stage 1: 123km 3091m :
Knysna to Saarsveld near
George
Stage 2: 137km 2518m: Saarsveld to
Calitzdorp
Stage 3: 133km 2340m: Calitzdorp to
Riversdale
Stage 4: 121km 2620m: Riversdale to
Swellendam
Stage 5: 146km 1819m: Swellendam to
Bredaarsdorp
Stage 6: 130km 2095m: Bredaarsdorp to
Hermanus
Stage 7: 91km 1985m: Hermanus to
Grabouw
Stage 8: 68km 1760m: Grabouw to Lourensford near
Somerset West For accommodation in the stage
finishes and locations check the links above to the
relevant towns where the race village will be setup. Book
accommodation early or be disappointed, as the Cape Epic
fills up these little places where accommodation is at a
premium. There are no easy days on this route
and long distances in the first 6 days are going to be
challenging. Day 1 will be as tough as ever and day 2 has
the potential to be the toughest day ever with a really
long and hard climb towards the end of the stage. The
other days are long and hard. Don’t be fooled by the
shorter distances on the last two days, the climbing and
the terrain will make them interesting and hard after 7
days of solid riding. It looks like there will be a fair
amount of technical rocky and sandy stretches following
the standard set by last years superb route.
From experience the route organisers highlight the
easier parts and smooth over the difficult parts, this was
definitely evident from last night, with a few subtle
warnings of extra training, rough conditions and long days
and no mention of so called rest days. It promises to be
another awesome event.
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