Cape Epic 'crucial building block' for Sofia Gomez Villafane's US gravel races

Sofia Gomez Villafañe won her first race of the season last Saturday, making her two-for-two in appearances at the Belgian Waffle Ride (BWR) Arizona. It sets the stage for her to add another off-road series to a packed schedule, where she will be among the 60-rider field at the Life Time Grand Prix again.

But the darling of dirt came into the 2024 season with some question marks. Would she commit to the seven-race series again with Life Time, or just focus on individual races? Could she fit in the BWR Tripel Crown of Gravel? Would the Olympic Games be a goal or other mountain bike events?

“I actually wasn't gonna apply for 2024 [Life Time series]. Then I started working on my calendar and I figured I'm gonna be doing four of those events anyway, what's adding one more to maybe try to get some prize money? I will see how Sea Otter, then Unbound and Crusher go, and obviously, Leadville because those were the ones I knew I was going to do anyway,” she told Cyclingnews.

“Am I still gonna show up, prepare to win those races? You bet. That's gonna be my goal. I think I might just focus more on individual results rather than the overall. Yeah, I'm still doing Grand Prix. But I'm honestly surprised that I'm back.”

Villafañe won a trio of races in the first half of the Grand Prix last year, including Fuego XL at Sea Otter Classic and set a women’s course record at Crusher in the Tushar. She finished second at Unbound Gravel 200 behind Germany's Carolin Schiff, who was not part of the series. She then locked in her overall title with a third-place finish at Chequamegon MTB. 

She expects to add US Marathon Mountain Bike Nationals in West Virginia to her summer schedule, as it is a priority for her sponsor Specialized. She admitted that this year she may focus on competing at UCI Marathon World Championships rather than UCI Gravel World Championships. 

“I break my season up into three - the build to Cape Epic, then Unbound and then after I’m done I kind of decide the second half of the season.

“So I will be doing BWR in California for the first time. I’m excited. I feel weird that I haven't done that race yet. I really want to go for the ‘Tripel’ Crown,” Villafañe told Cyclingnews before heading north from her winter training base in Tucson, Arizona to Cave Creek, Arizona for the opening BWR race on a new course she said “delivered some of the rowdiest racing I have experienced in a long time”.

New for 2024, the Belgian Waffle Ride organisers reshuffled their calendar to place events in Arizona, Utah and California into a seven-week timeframe for an omnium-format pro series, with a $40,000 total prize purse. Of that total, $25,500 will be split evenly among the top five pro men and top five pro women in the series. It may be tough for Villafañe to do the triple.

“I’m heading back to Cape Epic. It’s a bit of a tight turn around,” she said of fitting the 128-mile BWR Utah on April 6 into her US programme after competing at the South African mountain bike endurance race.

“I'll just have to see how I'm doing after Cape Epic. But I really respect the training loads that Cape Epic leaves me with and I really need to make sure I can recover from that to be able to be going well again. So I just kind of play it by ear and we'll see if I make the trip to Utah or not to contend for the Tripel Crown.”

This time Villafañe will partner with Samara Sheppard –a multi-time mountain bike champion of New Zealand and also a Life Time series challenger in 2024 – for the Toyota-Specialized-NinetyOne team to try reclaim the Cape Epic title she won with Haley Batten two years ago. This year’s 20th edition of the MTB stage race is March 17-24.

“Samara was suggested to me by Katerina Nash [her 2023 partner] this fall when she was asking me who I was going to go back to Absa Cape Epic with in 2024,” Villafañe said. “We both have our backgrounds in XCO and have transitioned to more marathon distance events over the past years so I think we will be a good match up for this year’s Absa Cape Epic.”

It is her fourth trip to South Africa for the eight-day MTB stage race covering 435 miles (700km) and 52,500 feet (16,000m) of elevation gain for Villafañe, who said she has “a lot of love” for the event.

“It’s just a big race. There's multiple aspects, like the team aspect. It's really cool to have to work with somebody and figure out collectively how to be the strongest team out there, with communication, nutrition, and setting egos aside for the greater good. It's always a really fun challenge,” she said.

“For me, it also serves as a really good training week, actually. The training stimulus that I get from Cape Epic, I can't really replicate at home. It's eight days where I wake up, my breakfast is done, go ride my bike really hard, come back, lunch is served, I get a massage, a shower, hang out, then dinner is served and I go to bed. I treat it as a training camp. So for me, it's such a crucial building block within my base.”

With dual citizenship in Argentina, where she was born, and in the USA, where she has lived since she was a teenager, Villafañe competed for Argentina at the Tokyo Olympic Games in XCO. Villafañe did not compete at the continental championships in Santiago, Chile last fall and missed the hunt for qualification points for the Paris Olympic Games. Still, she was not deflated, it just made planning for 2024 easier.

“I decided to not pursue an Olympic qualification for Paris, due to my country's selection criteria,” she told organisers of Cape Epic. "I am not trying to balance out an XCO and endurance schedule. For me, the Absa Cape Epic has always served as this amazing training stimulus that gets me in really good shape for the spring and early summer races.”

Before she switches to flat handlebars for another Cape Epic, Villafañe and partner Keegan Swenson will try a new race in west Texas, Valley of Tears. The duo will serve as ambassadors for the event and are favourites to win the race with a sizable prize purse, which is attracting a heavy field of competitors. The women’s open field includes Emily Newsom and Jenna Rinehart, while the men’s open field includes Alex Howes, Adam Roberge and Brennan Wertz.

“We'll be there racing Saturday. It's a really cool event. They have a 10am start time. It's a $20 entry fee, and to win is 2500 bucks. For fourth to 10th [places] is $1,000 each as well. It's a really, really generous prize purse. You can make more at that race finishing 10th than you could winning BWR Arizona,” she said, having claimed $750 of the total $3,000 prize purse in Cave Creek last weekend for the win.

Massive wildfires have destroyed over 1.3 million acres across the Texas panhandle in the past week and are still burning, but well to the north of Turkey, Texas where Valley of Tears will take place. Organisers used social media to confirm that the March 9 event is unaffected by the fires, and “our thoughts and prayers are with our community and fellow neighbors”.