Who to watch at the 48th Cape Town Cycle Tour

Both the elite men’s and women’s races at this Sunday’s 2026 Cape Town Cycle Tour feature stacked fields. In the men’s four, former winners line up against a peloton that contains at least six other potential winners.  

In the women’s Tiffany Keep is the only previous champion on the start list, but the newly crowned South African Road Champion, Tyler Jacobs, is the rider nobody will want to go to the line in a group with.

Such is the ferocity of Jacobs’ sprint finish, which she honed in mountain bike short-course races in 2025, that even prolific winners on the road, like Keep, Vera Looser, and Hayley Preen, will need to race smart to avoid going head-to-head with the Liv Factory Racing star.

The presence of Candice Lill and the reigning mountain bike marathon World Champion, Kate Courtney, on the start list suggests that the 48th edition could be raced aggressively, with a smaller group going away earlier. While Lisa Bone’s Cycle Nation Enza Construction team may work to keep the peloton together. Given her form coming into the Cape Town Cycle Tour, Bone is potentially among the few who would relish a rematch with Jacobs, after finishing second in their national road race showdown.

With near-perfect conditions expected for race day, the elite women will need to set a furious tempo to soften up their rivals and take the sting out of the legs of the fastest finishers. A fast race could see Pia Grünewald’s course record of 2 hours, 5 minutes, and 18 seconds challenged. The weather is predicted to be cool in the morning, warming to a high of 27 in the afternoon, with a light southeasterly breeze helping blow riders home in the final 50 kilometres.

In the men’s race, an aggressive edition will suit most of the field. Even the fastest finishers, defending champion Tyler Lange and 2012 winner Reinardt Janse van Rensburg, will fancy their chances of making it over both Chapmans Peak Drive and Suikerbossie with the puncheurs. Along with the 2022 victor, Marc Pritzen, 2023’s title holder, Chris Jooste, and 2024 champion Kent Main, other five-star favourites include Ryan Gibbons, Felix Stehli, Jaedon Terlouw, Luke Moir, Travis Stedman, Sascha Webber, and Alex Miller.

The men will contest the traditional 109-kilometre course, which starts alongside the Castle in the centre of Cape Town and finishes on Helen Suzman Boulevard, in Green Point. The women’s 78-kilometre route begins in Fish Hoek, and with both elite races starting at the same time at 6:20am, the women should finish roughly 15 minutes before the men at about 8:3am.

The annual event is expected to attract around 30 000 cyclists.