News Bystronic South Africa supports top mountain biker
Over the past 20 years mountain biking has become an extremely popular sport. An increasing amount of Bystronic South Africa customers enjoy it and participate in “The Cape Epic” – also known as the “Tour de France of Mountain Biking”. With this comes a keen interest in the top athletes of the sport, Ariane Lüthi being one of them. She has won the Cape Epic five times and has become a well-known name in the mountain biking community. We are delighted to support her this year.
Portrait of Ariane Lüthi
Ariane Lüthi and her bike
What are Ariane Lüthi’s goals for the year?
2020 is Ariane Lüthi’s tenth season as a professional mountain biker. Her four main targets of the year will be the Absa Cape Epic in March, the European and Swiss Championship in June and the World Championship end of September in Turkey. She adds: “To have a company like Bystronic backing me in my run for the podiums certainly adds to the excitement”.
How does she prepare for “The Cape Epic”?
“The Cape Epic” is an eight days race and is ridden in a team of two. Ariane describes what does that mean: “In fact we are not allowed to be separated by more than two minutes in the race, otherwise we would face a penalty of one hour. That means, we race along side one another for the entire 647 kilometres. You can imagine that being pushed to the absolute limit during the five hours stages this partnership will be tested properly over the course of the week”.
In January, Ariane headed to Spain where she trained with her Cape Epic partner, Belgian MTB Marathon Champion Alice Pirard. Next to the training they also used the time to speak often and openly to build the trust that it will take when things become hectic in the race. During the long rides on the Costa Blanca they also spoke about their fears and doubts in hindsight of the race and tried to figure out how we they can bring the best out of each other.
Ariane Lüthi in action