Some of you will know me as the founder of the Absa Cape Epic (we started work on that a full 20 years ago now!). Well, I’m now planning something in a different – but also familiar – space.
After selling the Cape Epic to Ironman in 2017 – but staying on in a consulting capacity – I finally said goodbye to the event at the end of 2022, by which time my family and I were living in Arosa, Switzerland (where my son and daughter learned to ski in the Alps). As is customary with such deals, I was subject to a restraining order when I left the Cape Epic and which ended on June 30 this year.
Since then I have been through quite a journey, wanting to be involved in another entrepreneurial enterprise but also missing the Cape Epic immensely, both for the amazing people I came into contact with and for the creative side of launching and running an enterprise – thinking up ways to make it appealing and negotiating the many hurdles that you inevitably have to face.
My skill, I suppose, and experience are quite obviously in the events field, but I didn’t want to get into the Cape Epic’s space – I continue to feel very attached to that event.
But now I think I might have found just the thing.
In October next year we will launch the first Gravel Burn, a gravel bike stage race starting in Knysna and finishing six days later at the Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape.
I know you will have a thousand questions and I would like to think the team I am gathering around me for this have the answers to just about every one of those. In the days and weeks to come I will use this space to flesh out our thinking and share our ideas. I would, of course, appreciate any feedback. I can’t promise to respond to everyone but I will read them all.
Talking of the team, I will share more details when we get closer to the event, but I am particularly delighted to have Rich McMartin on board. Rich, you may remember, helped launch the Cape Epic with me back in 2005 and was central to that event’s great success. He was an outstanding and extremely popular member of that team and I was very sad when he quit to go into his own business in 2015. Rich has, by the way, been keeping up with the Cape Epic by working at it for the past several years as a Hyena – one of the sweeps that follow the race and ensures that everyone is safe and well.
Another old colleague who has joined me is marketing maestro and former racer Neil Gardiner, who is already an avid gravel biker.
There are a couple of other familiar faces that I am hoping will be there by the time we fire the starting gun in Knysna next year. Watch this space!
On a personal note, I am very excited to be back creating something new again and grateful that I am able to lean on the experience I gained from launching the Cape Epic. I must stress though that we are not recreating the Cape Epic – it will be an altogether different type of event, at a different time of year.
One thing we do hope to emulate though is the renowned organisational efficiency of that event. I am confident we are putting together just the team to do that.
As I said, I will try to answer all your possible questions here in the coming weeks, but an obvious one is: why gravel?
The answer to that is that is that I believe gravel biking is now at about the place where mountain biking was 20 years ago – growing exponentially in Europe and the United States, both professionally and among everyday riders – and we think that the gravel market is ripe for a pro-am stage race. And where better to stage it than South Africa?
Gravel biking is a completely new category of cycling – with a following and participants that are quite different to mountain biking (in Europe, for example, the bulk of participants are from the road riding community) – and one with huge growth potential.
So all of the above ticks a lot of boxes for me. I hope you will be as excited as I am about this venture and we will get to see some of you out on the gravel roads of the Western and Eastern Cape on the Gravel Burn.
I believe it is going to be a fantastic event and would love you to come along for the ride!
Kevin