As the Cape Epic was kicking off, the e-FORT x ChemChamp of Margot Moschetti & Samara Sheppard was seen as the underdogs.
However, right after 3km in the prologue, they were reminding everyone that Margot Moschetti is the current UCI #4 in the XC Marathon World ranking and Samara Sheppard the last bronze medalist at the Cape Epic 2024: they were second only 4 seconds by the Specialized Team, and already cleared more than 40 seconds to everyone else.
The gap to the Specialized team increased to 50 seconds until the km 21… but the e-FORT x ChemChamp team put the hammer down in the last 5 km.
At the finish line, they were only 3 seconds behind Annika Langvald and Sofia Gomez Villafane of Specialized, and more than 1 minute in front of the Efficient Infinity SCB SRAM team of Vera Looser & Alexis Skarda.
The stage 1 was already seen has a potential Epic decider with its almost 2000m of climbing in the last 46km. With such a little gap at the top, there is now no doubt that the 96km of the upcoming stage will be to be followed by the fans!
Margot Moschetti thoughts:
“Coming to the prologue, today, we had quite some questions regarding our combination with Samara as we didn’t have the opportunity to race at the Andalucia Bike Race as planned.
Nonetheless, we naturally found our flow together both of us checking the other one behind to make sure the rhythm was right. We succeeded to work well together although we didn’t follow our original plan at all (laugh).
We are happy with the final result, but we keep our heads cool: today was a short stage and the Epic is very long. Tomorrow, we know the stage will be hard. We are ready to give it our all!”
Samara Sheppard thoughts:
“I am really proud of the result. I have to admit that I have been impressed by how strong Margot is.
We pushed hard on all the climbs and have been pretty conservative in the descents. It was a hard, dusty, prologue course, but we did a solid time and finished only 3 seconds behind at the end which gives us a lot of confidence and makes me excited for what is to come.
We know now that we are in the mix with the Specialized team and evenly matched with the Efficient Infinity team and other girls as well where everyone has its own strengths.
We are quite similar with Margot so we didn’t have to communicate too much as everything fell into place quite naturally. We also understand our strengths quite well from the few rides we made together and today. We are bounded by the same commitment from each other’s to go as fast as possible! Tomorrow we can be confident into our strengths and we know also our own limitations. We will have to take care of ourselves during the first half of the stage thinking about hydration and nutrition, and the race will most probably be decided in the last 40km”.
