Fan Status Reconfirmed

At the midpoint of this year’s race, Sina Frei and Laura Stigger are crushing the women’s field.

Thanks to the Absa Cape Epic, I am a bike racing fan again! I had been AWOL for a few weeks. But each stage of the 8-day African mountain bike race is free to watch on YouTube, and the 7-hour time difference puts the live broadcast in the small hours of the morning on this side of the Atlantic. That’s perfect for a 3rd Shift worker like me. I’ve got my job on one computer monitor and the race on another. Rest assured: I’m not neglecting my job, but in spare moments I’ll un-mute the race and get caught up.

I didn’t see any of the three UCI Cyclocross World Cup races here in the United States this month. Injury kept me from attending the race in Waterloo, and economy kept me from subscribing to FloBikes to watch the broadcasts. I’ve said it before: it’s now almost impossible to watch cyclocross for free. So, I’m very grateful for the Cape Epic broadcasts on YouTube, just as I love the Red Bull.tv coverage of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup.

Annika Langvad—the Danish woman who won the Cape Epic five times during a career marked by success on the road, in mountain biking, and in cyclocross—is providing the color commentary for this year’s broadcast. And she has valuable insight, but it’s also kind of sad that she isn’t racing anymore. She was a cyclist after my own heart, someone who was good at everything and not a one-dimensional specialist.

I like Dutch cyclists Marianne Vos and Lucinda Brand for the same reasons, and Italy’s Eva Lechner, and France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot. Among the men, Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands), Wout van Aert (Belgium), and Tom Pidcock (Great Britain) shine as multi-discipline stars. There’s a ton of talent out there right now.

But in addition to Langvad, a couple of recent departures have made cycling feel a little less like the sport with which I fell in love. Sophie de Boer (Netherlands) announced her retirement this week. She was one of my favorite cyclocross racers. And Katie Compton, who reigned for a decade and a half as the American women’s cyclocross champion, was forced out of the sport by a positive doping test that she and her husband clumsily denied. I didn’t say anything in August when the Compton story broke. I hoped it would prove untrue—she had been such a great ambassador for American cyclocross—but two months later there’s still no good reason to doubt the validity of the test results.

I’ll get over it. Yes, I miss many now-retired pros: Sven Nys, Paolo Bettini, Thomas Voeckler, and a bunch of others. But cycling renews itself every season. This week, for example, I recognize only a few of the names of the Cape Epic riders, and that’s OK. It’s still bike racing.