Armstrong effect could be Epic for the Cape

The organisers of the Cape Epic announced the route for the 2010 race at the Moyo restaurant at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg on Wednesday. In South African and, indeed, international mountain bike circles this is a big deal.

The Cape Epic, an eight-day, 800km, two-man team, stage race around the Western Cape is one of the most prestigious mountain bike races in the world. Entries are sold out inside a day, the waiting list is lengthy and this despite it being damn hard.

The Cape Epic has worked hard and cleverly at marketing its event, offering footage of the event free of charge to television stations around the world.

One Absa official is believed to have turned on his telly in a hotel room in Europe and watched a documentary on the race with his bank's logo all over the place. You can?t buy that sort of advertising.

But the world of cycling, and mountain biking in particular, is a small one and does not receive the media space in South Africa that football, rugby and cricket do; this despite mountain biking, for example, providing us with two of our more recent world champions in Burry Stander and Greg Minnaar.

For all the success of the Cape Epic, it received the most publicity in its short history this year when there was a suggestion that Lance Armstrong was considering taking part in the 2010 Epic. Bill Stapleton, Armstrong's business partner, had said the seven-times Tour de France winner wanted to diversify his riding.

"After his success at the Leadville 100 (a mountain bike race in the United States, won by Armstrong recently), Lance is also looking to do some more mountain bike races including the Cape Epic stage race in South Africa," said Stapleton. "He really loves mountain bike racing and his sponsor is very supportive of him doing things outside like that."

I called Kevin Vermaak, the founder of the Cape Epic, for comment and the Weekend Argus ran the story in Cape Town, giving it a front page ear and, for Vermaak, the Holy Grail of print publicity. He sent me an SMS on the Saturday the story ran: "Our first ever lamp pole poster :-)."

That is the power of Armstrong, the biggest name in cycling and, for some, the most controversial name in cycling. Once Armstrong had been linked with the Epic, suddenly the publicity mill kicked into overdrive.

In commentary for the Paris-Tours race, Phil Liggett, the "voice of cycling", mentioned not once, not twice, but three times that Armstrong would be riding the Epic. Liggett is a good friend of South Africa and Armstrong. I SMSed Vermaak the news and he positively gurgled.

"Just think," he typed, "you'll be riding with him."

Oh yeah, I'd almost forgotten about that. Over a few Friday afternoon beers Jeremy Maartens, the professional cyclist who has ridden with Barloworld, HSBC, Microsoft and House of Paint, the former South African and All African time-trial champion and who has signed a three-year deal with the ambitious DCM Chrome team and I thought it would be a good idea to ride together in 2010. Maartens will be doing a lot of pushing, but he seems happy with that. He's a kind man, is Jeremy.

If Armstrong rides the Epic - and negotiations are still ongoing, but ongoing well, says Vermaak - it will lift the race to an entirely new level. Armstrong is already coming to South Africa in March 2010 for the Jag Foundation charity.

He will not ride the Argus Cycle Tour but Vermaak is still quietly confident he will take part in the Epic. The media frenzy will be something else - the Epic, already an iconic South African race, will become a global event.

- Another South African who felt the Armstrong effect was Rob Louw, the former rugby star. He is in the United States for surgery for skin cancer and received an SMS from Armstrong this week.

"I've known Trevor Immelman from Cape Town for some time and he's friends with Lance Armstrong," Louw said. "When he heard what I was going through, he called Lance and I got an SMS from him wishing me luck. That was pretty special."