Cape Town Cycle Tour 2026

[Jaco Steyn]

4 hours ago, Wannabe said:

I still have the long sleeve shirt we got (or purchased, too long back to remember) claiming it to be the "Tour of Storms"

Who else hung onto this piece of memorabilia?

 

Never worn mine, should still be in its original plastic wrapping. Now I am wondering where it is, for nostalgy's sake, I will have to go and look for it.

[Owen]

Many people enjoy the expo vibe. I think we need the expo to continue because it stimulates the cycling industry. 

My experience with riding in the bunch on Sunday is that I don't follow any rider who has less than 5 previous cycle tours under their belt. Very grateful that the cycle tour has each rider's number of tours printed on the number. The A Bunch moves quickly at times, and you need to trust the wheel you are on.

A club member of mine did the event in 2024 on a normal road bike. This guy is around 125kg's. His time was close to 5 hours. In 2025 he got himself an ebike with a huge extra battery of 750wh. His time on this weapon of an ebike was around 2;40. Yes, he got DQ'ed but he still goes around telling people his time. 

Long live the cycle tour. 

[cadenceblur]

22 minutes ago, Owen said:

Many people enjoy the expo vibe. I think we need the expo to continue because it stimulates the cycling industry. 

My experience with riding in the bunch on Sunday is that I don't follow any rider who has less than 5 previous cycle tours under their belt. Very grateful that the cycle tour has each rider's number of tours printed on the number. The A Bunch moves quickly at times, and you need to trust the wheel you are on.

A club member of mine did the event in 2024 on a normal road bike. This guy is around 125kg's. His time was close to 5 hours. In 2025 he got himself an ebike with a huge extra battery of 750wh. His time on this weapon of an ebike was around 2;40. Yes, he got DQ'ed but he still goes around telling people his time. 

Long live the cycle tour. 

I concur with previous sentiments - I will gladly miss the expo as it no longer offers novelty or commercial benefit on products any different from what one can get online or in a physical store. 

The "0" tours guys in high groups another story in itself.

[Paul Ruinaard]

1 hour ago, FaizelSalie_01 said:

What is the fastest ebike time (unconfirmed) that you know off for CTCT? Sub 2 or just over 2 hours?

 

Now that is a good question which I have been wondering what the answer is. Its a bit off topic but its also an interesting discussion.

Maybe some data geek that is better than me can answer it for the CTCT this and last year.

But truth be told ts basically a function of the type (or power of the motor) of your ebike and the amount of battery power you have got. As well as your ego and wallet size. they seem to work in synch.

Option 1: Lots of battery with big powerful bike like an eMTB Specialized Levo Gen 4 Sworks or a DJI Amflow.  I know of someone who can build a piggy back battery for the current Specialized Levo MTBs that will give you close to 1500 kw/h of battery whch has been used for race to sea in off road guises. That motor is in the 800 watts output and 100 n/m of torque

Given some mods i.e. slicks, a 38 chain ring and some bigger gears (9 on the cluster) you could make one of them very very fast and also maybe pre position a battery booster pack halfway and then its just a function of battery power.

We are not even in the DJI Amflow part of the word which is over 1000 watts.

Also many folks in CTCT used 2 x batteries - change near Simonstown. 

Option 2: Given a strong guy on something like an e road bike without any fancy chages to limiters and the like you could go quite quickly.  Specialized Creo with the SL 2.2 motor gives you 320 Watts on Turbo and then with a range extender it will give you a rnage of something like 130kms. Another range extender out on course and you have a lof of gas and a bike that will be able to happily sit in any high speed bunch riding.

I reckon a sub 3 is achievable in secnario 2 and in 1 you can build something pretty crazy and then get really fast. I am old , not that thin and nowhere close to my peak but on my Creo 3:20 is pretty much in reach with a good bit of effort. Those 20 minutes can easily be shaved off with a big strong guy on the bike. So Sub 3 is basically an easily done thing.

The examples of this that are worth knowing about are Joris Ryf who is/was the emtb world champion who did the wine 2 Whales on an ebike (Specialized Levo) with no limits and i think a massive battery or many batteries - total time FOR THE WHOLE RACE was i think less than 6 hours. Thats the whole course. All three days. That was a year or two ago. You can assume his bike had no governors and was approaching an MX bike or a Talaria.

There is another dude who is bagging all the ebike KOMS in Paarl on the mounatin i have seen on Strava (wont mention names) who seems to have a lot of battery and no limits on the bike. Some of his KOMs he is claiming has 36 kmh ave up to the mast up on paarl mountain and the gradient is probably average 6% and higher in some places. That is crazy - he passed us going uphill like he was on an enduro motorbike. Many segments he has identified he now owns using this approach. Its a function of a.)power output and b.) battery - not really much else - you need to be able to point it and see where it goes.

There must be someone who has gone full gas on an ebike for laughs and put up something like a 2:40 for the CTCT or something way under 3 hrs.

 

 

Edited March 11 by Paul Ruinaard

[Dexter-morgan]

19 hours ago, Owen said:

Many people enjoy the expo vibe. I think we need the expo to continue because it stimulates the cycling industry. 

My experience with riding in the bunch on Sunday is that I don't follow any rider who has less than 5 previous cycle tours under their belt. Very grateful that the cycle tour has each rider's number of tours printed on the number. The A Bunch moves quickly at times, and you need to trust the wheel you are on.

A club member of mine did the event in 2024 on a normal road bike. This guy is around 125kg's. His time was close to 5 hours. In 2025 he got himself an ebike with a huge extra battery of 750wh. His time on this weapon of an ebike was around 2;40. Yes, he got DQ'ed but he still goes around telling people his time. 

Long live the cycle tour. 

I have Zero Cape town cycle tours on my number but have done 16 "Ride joburg" cycle tours @ a best time of 2:54 and finished many races in bunches, I did start in 1E, but I suppose there is exception to the rule.

[PappaWatTrap]

9 minutes ago, Dexter-morgan said:

I have Zero Cape town cycle tours on my number but have done 16 "Ride joburg" cycle tours @ a best time of 2:54 and finished many races in bunches, I did start in 1E, but I suppose there is exception to the rule.

There are definitely exception to the rule. There was a Stephan in the A bunch, I cant remember his tally of Tours but I can remember thinking someone with as many tours as he does shouldn't be here. He would just switch lines without a second thought and force gaps in the bunch, he almost took me out a few times as I tried to get past his line of destruction.  

[Jbr]

29 minutes ago, Dexter-morgan said:

I have Zero Cape town cycle tours on my number but have done 16 "Ride joburg" cycle tours @ a best time of 2:54 and finished many races in bunches, I did start in 1E, but I suppose there is exception to the rule.

I did my 5th this weekend. Seems most of the $ bunch didn't mind riding behind my wheel for the first hour and half 😜

[Kom]

i laughed when i heard a euro rider shout "stop using your brakes" cruising past newlands forest in 1A

amazes me how bunch riders just expect a consistent speed, with no read on the terrain, peddling into the center of a group when the riders ahead have clearly slowed to ride up a hill, is the biggest lack of self awareness i see in our local race scene.

"Breyton Paulse im looking at you" yup i was the team captain shouting at you, altho i felt k*k when i realised it was him.

ive added a rider lookup to the ctct racenator site if any y'all are interested --> 

https://sweet-torrone-3935b2.netlify.app

[DieselnDust]

46 minutes ago, Jbr said:

I did my 5th this weekend. Seems most of the $ bunch didn't mind riding behind my wheel for the first hour and half 😜

Thats why they let you go you wrecking ball you 😄

[Mamil]

38 minutes ago, Kom said:

i laughed when i heard a euro rider shout "stop using your brakes" cruising past newlands forest in 1A

amazes me how bunch riders just expect a consistent speed, with no read on the terrain, peddling into the center of a group when the riders ahead have clearly slowed to ride up a hill, is the biggest lack of self awareness i see in our local race scene.

"Breyton Paulse im looking at you" yup i was the team captain shouting at you, altho i felt k*k when i realised it was him.

ive added a rider lookup to the ctct racenator site if any y'all are interested --> 

https://sweet-torrone-3935b2.netlify.app

Yoh that's an amazing thing you've built there.

Agree with you about that bunch riding phenomenon - Leaders of a big batch accelerate down the hill so group strings out as the middle and tailgunners crest the previous hill or come off a flat - this strings things out - middle and tailgunners think ""Oh **** I better stop on the gas"and smash out 500 watts for 10 seconds just as the front runners slow up on the hill - mid level guys slam on anchors and by the time the ripple hits the bottom third of the bunch people are shouting and skidding into each other's wheels.

Nerve wracking.

[Michael S]

 

1 hour ago, Kom said:

 

ive added a rider lookup to the ctct racenator site if any y'all are interested --> 

https://sweet-torrone-3935b2.netlify.app

For the sake of my ego compared to the average time of my group, any chance you can make the data set the full groups instead of only sub 3?

[Kom]

2 minutes ago, Michael S said:

 

For the sake of my ego compared to the average time of my group, any chance you can make the data set the full groups instead of only sub 3?

definitely - i have been expanding the dataset holistically i.e 2022, 2023 were added on the last deploy. im aiming to roughly get to ~3:10-3:30 by the end of today.

[PappaWatTrap]

2 minutes ago, Kom said:

definitely - i have been expanding the dataset holistically i.e 2022, 2023 were added on the last deploy. im aiming to roughly get to ~3:10-3:30 by the end of today.

Dude well done and thank you. That is very cool. What would be interesting to see is if one could compare between 2 people. For example 2 people within the same batch then one could see the following. But yes I can just do it in an excel sheet so not nitpicking, very cool website you have made 

[Skubarra]

1 hour ago, Kom said:

i laughed when i heard a euro rider shout "stop using your brakes" cruising past newlands forest in 1A

amazes me how bunch riders just expect a consistent speed, with no read on the terrain, peddling into the center of a group when the riders ahead have clearly slowed to ride up a hill, is the biggest lack of self awareness i see in our local race scene.

"Breyton Paulse im looking at you" yup i was the team captain shouting at you, altho i felt k*k when i realised it was him.

ive added a rider lookup to the ctct racenator site if any y'all are interested --> 

https://sweet-torrone-3935b2.netlify.app

Very cool stats

Out of interest. The wave in your stats - would that be the whole of the group or just those on the dataset that did sub-3?

I was in the same group and same age cat for the past 5 years so the comparisons work well in my case. 

[dexterdent]

1 hour ago, Kom said:

i laughed when i heard a euro rider shout "stop using your brakes" cruising past newlands forest in 1A

amazes me how bunch riders just expect a consistent speed, with no read on the terrain, peddling into the center of a group when the riders ahead have clearly slowed to ride up a hill, is the biggest lack of self awareness i see in our local race scene.

"Breyton Paulse im looking at you" yup i was the team captain shouting at you, altho i felt k*k when i realised it was him.

ive added a rider lookup to the ctct racenator site if any y'all are interested --> 

https://sweet-torrone-3935b2.netlify.app

Yeah had some 1A plonker shouting that in the Bakoven area as well - easy to ignore when you are likely the third 1B group catching and passing him when he runs out of wheels to suck again.

[Kom]

28 minutes ago, Skubarra said:

Out of interest. The wave in your stats - would that be the whole of the group or just those on the dataset that did sub-3?

correct (for now) - so for outliers achieving sub 3 from batch 1D as an example, if only 20 riders from that batch achieved a sub 3, the median is for those 20 riders not the whole batch.