Sören Nissen, 2013 and 2015 Danish Marathon Champion, and his Norwegian partner Lars Granberg rode to an 11th place overall at the Cape Epic. They posted stable results in all seven stages near the top ten, and was the fastest team of those competing on a hardtail. On his STEVENS Sonora SL, Nissen felt in full control of the terrain.
The week-long stage race started on the Tafelberg in Cape Town with a 20 kilometer time trial prologue with an altitude gain of 600 meters. With this as its opening stage, it was clear that this is one of the toughest races in the world.
From the first stage, Nissen and Granberg were able to establish themselves as part of the top group of competitors. "Right from the beginning, we were right up there and were mainly spared of technical problems,” says Nissen. In the second stage, they were quickly able to fix a chain break and still position themselves more closely to the top ten.
The third stage was very long with 129 kilometers and 2,300 meters of altitude. “And with temperatures of about 30 ° C this stage was a real challenge, but we worked well together,” said Nissen. Their fourth stage (111 km with 2,000 meters in altitude) played out really well, and the Danish-Norwegian duo continued to move up in the rankings.
Stage 5: "We had chosen in advance to strike here," says Sören Nissen. Unfortunately the plan to get a gap on their targeted competitors did not play out as expected. "Right from the start we were in the right group, but in the second serious descent Lars had a bad crash which cost us critical time.”
After such bad luck, their new objective was to secure a spot in the top ten. "On the sixth stage (71 kilometers with 2,000 meters of altitude) we gave everything and dug deep into our reserves." That had an impact on the final day of racing (92 km with 1500 meters in altitude). "But there was nothing left in the tank as Lars completely expended his energy on the previous stages. Instead we just tried to lose as little time as possible,” says Sören Nissen.
With their eleventh place, the duo had just missed their target. But on the positive side, Nissen and Granberg were the fastest team that competed on hardtail bikes. "I am very pleased with my Sonora SL, as it worked perfectly under these extremely demanding conditions.”
Cape Epic is the "toughest race in the world" where one could only win on a fully which compensates more for the extreme shocks of the terrain. Nissen says, "You can only win the Cape Epic when you ride it more often and when you try to learn from your mistakes to improve and optimize everything.”
Next year, perhaps he will ride on a STEVENS fully.
