Stage 7: Triple Delight for South Africa at the 2026 Absa Cape Epic

Matt Beers and Tristan Nortje became the first all-South African team to win the Elite Men’s race at the Absa Cape Epic on Sunday, 22 March 2026. The Specialized Toyota Imbuko team overturned a 13-second deficit on the final stage to become the third team in the history of the race to seize yellow on Stage 7. Wilier Vittoria’s Luca Braidot & Simone Avondetto, who had held the general classification lead since the conclusion of Stage 3, had to be content with second for the second year in a row.2026 Elite Women’s champions, Thömus Maxon Sabi Sabi, had the title all but sewn up since Friday’s Queen Stage, when they put 9 and a half minutes into their nearest rivals, the She Sends Foundation. Candice Lill’s victory was her first and broke a sequence of second-place finishes for the South African cross-country champion that dates back to the 2019 race. Upon sealing the victory, Lill’s teammate, Alessandra Keller, became the fifth Swiss woman to win the Absa Cape Epic crown. The absence from the final overall standings of Kate Courtney and Greta Seiwald [illness], as well as Vera Looser and Rosa van Doorn [injury], suggests that the women’s race was less fiercely contested than it actually was, but does not detract from the class of Lill and Keller’s near flawless performance.