Cape to Cape mountain biking winners prevail after four days of racing

After taking on more than 200km across the Capes, winners have been crowned for the 2022 Cape to Cape Mountain Biking event.

With more than 1000 riders taking to the course over four days, winning men’s pair Jon Odams and Brendan Johnston crossed the line at Cape Naturaliste’s Wise Wines with a total time of 6:12:00.

The winning duo cleared their competition by more than two minutes, with Reece Tucknott and Adam Blazevic, and Joel Green and Tali Lane Welsh, sprinting to the finish for the remaining podium places.

Pleased with the win, the pair said it was great to be back after missing last year’s event.

“It was awesome, we had a pretty fast start on the road and the fire roads and after we got into some of the fresh single track we played a little bit of a game with them and got a little gap and that was it, just drove it home from there,” Odams said.

“We just gelled so well this week, we’ve just got so much experience year on year, we just play that every day, we take our turn during the race and it’s been the perfect week for us,” Johnston added.

For the women, Ella Bloor and Lucie van der Schalk blitzed the competition, winning all four stages with a combined time of 7:53:33.

Boor said the win was “pretty special” competing with Van der Schalk in her first mountain biking stage race.

“We just had so much fun, we rode as hard as we could and the trails were awesome,” she said.

“The trails were amazing again, hats off to the trail builders and volunteers out there maintaining them. It was a privilege to ride with Ella, especially when she’s in such amazing form as she is at the moment,” Van der Schalk said.

Taking out the mixed pairs division were Peta Mullens and Jarrod Moroni who crossed the line with a 7:00:13 run over the four-day race, their first victory as a team.