I'm from Europe and rode and finished Cape Epic in 2023. I'm still baffled by the fact 80 teams had to give up during and before stage 2, mostly because of Gastrointestinal illnesses. This is not due to people being weak, that mostly happens after more race days. There must have been a real source of contamination somewhere.
I'm used to race multiday stage races all over the planet for more then 15 years and know how to look for myself (joberg2c, Swiss Epic, Alps Epic, Breck Epic, Transportugal...). I also took probiotics before hand.
We also struggled a lot in the night of day 1 and day 2 and started day 2 with a lot of doubt whether we could finish. We didnt slept at all due to being sick and the howling wind. We started day 2 as being tourists and in the end we finished the stage successfully. The next days we had better legs and stomachs but our appetite was gone for the rest of the race and the ****s remained for 4 more weeks (!).
We had to ride through a cowshed in the prologue. And also through a lot of farmland on day 1. That could have been a potential source of contamination.
We didnt use the water in the race village up until we got sick because we still had bottled water in our tent. Only possible contaminated water source could have been the water point.
Another possibility could have been the after race dinner. Which had a lot debatble choices throughout the week. Since we never got real hungry anymore the rest of the days we skipped most of it.
When using the facilities I always had hand spray with me.
I was checked by doctors almost every day from day 3 onwards if it was still safe to race. Kudos for them for being so patient.
Back at home I was diagnosed with Enteroinvasive Escherichia coli. Which I suppose most people had.
You can avoid all of the above by going fully "Pro" and avoid the race village/food/aid stations all together, but we are just working people and the price for the Epic is already ridiculously overpriced that this not an option for the majority of the people.
I guess sometimes it's just down to bad luck, because we really tried to avoid this.
