Building the Cape Epic

The Cape Epic is widely regarded as the crown jewel in mountain bike stage racing. Many notable legends of the sport have called it the Tour de France of mountain biking. So how did Kevin Vermaak, a 30-year-old man new to mountain biking create a cultural phenomenon in the MTB world in the far away land of South Africa? This is his remarkable story...

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A podcast about the founders, the innovators, and the remarkable people in the cycling industry and the stories about the icons they've created.

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Kevin Vermaak 0:02
You know, there was this perception that this guy is milking the system, and like, making tons of money, and like charging way more than whatever, you know, what other events are charging. And in fact, I was losing so much money. I mean, the first year I was, you know, literally, yeah, I lost more money than not total revenue. Man, like more than 100% loss. And, you know, I needed to employ people. I mean, I needed to have full time staff to actually run this business. And I said it lonely because I couldn't actually tell anyone. I couldn't actually tell anyone how bad it was. I

Wade Wallace 0:47
from escape collective. This is overnight success, the podcast about the entrepreneurs, the personalities and the passionate people who make up the sport of cycling and the stories behind the icons they've built. You

the cape Epic is widely regarded as the crown jewel in mountain bike stage racing. Many notable legends of the sport have called it the Tour de France of mountain biking. The biggest names are competing. The depth of competition is unparalleled. The professionalism of how it's organized is flawless, and the difficulty is something that makes it proud of just finishing, as any South African mountain biker will tell you, is described as a rite of passage. Personally, I've competed in the cape epic twice, not including showing up in 2020 when it was canceled due to COVID. I've seen and experienced all of the things I just mentioned first hand, and count myself incredibly fortunate to have done so. So how on earth that a young, 30 year old man who is new to mountain biking? Never mind, no event, organizing experience, create a cultural phenomenon in the mountain bike world, in this far away land, making a bucket list for every single cross country rider in the world. Kevin Verma is the founder of this spectacular event. He grew up in Cape Town South Africa. Studied and worked as an electronic engineer, and as many South Africans do, he had a thirst for adventure, extreme activities and entrepreneurship, as I said, he wasn't a born and bred cyclist. He was working in London in the IT industry when he bought his first bike in the mid 90s. At first, it was just commuting because he preferred that over public transport. And then, as often as the case, it progressed from there, fairly ill prepared. In 2002 he went on a mountain bike stage race in Costa Rica, known as La Ruta with a few friends. As he was turning 30 years old, this is where the cape epic story begins, called la

Kevin Vermaak 2:52
ruta de los conquistadors. It's the the route of the Spanish conquistador goes from the the Atlantic Ocean across Costa Rica to the Pacific. And I think it was probably the original mountain bike stage race, because we did in 2002 and that was the 10th anniversary. And certainly I didn't know of any other stage races that were, you know, started at that time. And, yeah, I went, well, it was actually my first mountain bike race I ever entered, because whilst I did have a mountain bike, but it was for fun. I mean, we used to go and just ride for getting fit or or go and do adventures around the world. So literally, was the first mountain bike race I entered. And it was in November 22,002 and yeah, so often, some friends went across from London and did la Rita. And it is a time that coincided with a phase in my life. You know, I just turned 30. I'd finished a huge project at work, and I paid a degree of financial independence where I thought, What am I going to do now? You know, do I leave go and live somewhere else, start starting business? So it was like I had a very fertile mind for, you know, doing something completely new. And we headed off to Costa Rica and did this race at the Tower of our lives. And it was a fabulous ride, but the logistics surrounded me that's so difficult, you know? I mean, I remember finishing having to hang around, no access to tools and mechanics, and you know, you know, your bike is like destroyed, from seven hours riding in the mud, then take a bus for two hours back to the central San Jose, sitting in traffic, and then in my auditorium, fixing my bike, and then five the next morning, like taking another two hour bus trip back to the start. And so the logistics around it just made it. It is actually, I mean, the writing was awesome, but the logistics around it made it difficult to, you know, to enjoy the full 24 hour experience. So I mean, literally, I remember sitting on that bus came to my mates thinking, wow, you know, there's an opportunity. It here because the race was sold out. It wasn't, it wasn't cheap by any means. And I mean, you know, queues of North Americans that were, you know, lining up to do this race. And I thought, well, we could, yeah, I thought I could organize a better package where, you know, the writing could be amazing. And it wasn't like I was locked into doing it in South Africa. I mean, I was sitting in London thinking, where's the best place to do mountain bikes, day dress? Turns out was, I think it was South Africa, and for a host of reasons, but I felt confident that I could organize the, let's say the package, the whole package, such that we would put on a true premium experience. And I distinctly remember sitting on the bus chatting to folks and saying, like, do you think this is an idea that's worth doing? And yeah, turned out it was, was

Wade Wallace 5:54
it a two person race format? No,

Kevin Vermaak 5:56
that was a solo race. But I mean, it's an interesting insight to how people want to do these races, because I don't think I would ever have traveled from London or gone through the training in order to do the race if I'd done it on my own, you know. So whilst I was riding the race, you know, at the start line on my own, I was standing next to my mates with whom I'd spend six months training people that we was all about that were like our first stage race, and this first time we traveled across the planet basically to do a bike race. So it was a phenomenal experience, you know, preparing and doing the research and finding out what Costa Rica was like. And it's actually an important insight, I think, in terms of how you building an experience around a Bucha dress for amateurs?

Wade Wallace 6:46
So you started thinking like, there's an opportunity here to do something better, and what was the next step like after you finished that race, when did you start actually planning and saying, I'm going to do something here

Kevin Vermaak 7:01
from the day I finished university. I mean, I knew I'd always start my own business at some point. I think that's a South African mindset as well. It's like I was always going to be working for myself, and I was just trading auto and saving cash in my 20s whilst working in London to get to the point where you can start your own business. And I had a lot of ideas in London, but none of them were big enough for me to actually resign from my current job. And, you know, double down and, and, you know, embrace the new idea. Yeah, I came back to London and started doing the research, and just got so excited about finally having an idea that was which I thought was big enough to resign for and, and get, you know, get started on it. I'd mentioned that I'd finished a big project which had taken a lot out of me in the in that year leading up to the router. So I was kind of like my mind was looking for something else. And so I sent off a rough business plan to the two agencies that were involved in the trans op, which at the time, was which I didn't know when entered the router, but I found out that biggest mountain bike stage race then, and that was eight days, teams or two over the Alps, starting in Bavaria, going over the gym and to all Alps into into the black district of Italy. And yeah, I approached the two agencies that were behind that and headed off to meet them early July, early January, and met them both. And they both had different proposals how they could work together. And I chose one of them, and Yeah, agreed to work together, came back in London, resigned on the Monday morning, and literally, within just over a month, I'd packed up eight years of living in London, and, you know, headed off back to Cape Town. And yeah, so I started the race in London, but yeah, move back to Cape Town quickly.

Wade Wallace 9:01
Why did you eventually decide on Cape Town if kind of the world was the consideration?

Kevin Vermaak 9:06
Um, well, it's obviously an area that I didn't know, even if I'd, you know, I'd never worked in South Africa. I didn't have, like, let's say, a professional network in South Africa, but it was the one area I could look on a map and just go, Okay, this could work where, like, I really couldn't do that. Well, I knew the UK wasn't the location that was, obviously we'd been living for the last eight years. And I, you know, I mentioned a couple of reasons why I think that South Africa March. Southern Hemisphere was particularly good for a mountain bikes, day dress and yeah, South Africa tick those boxes

Wade Wallace 9:49
so you pack up, you move back to Cape Town. What does day one look like? Of organizing, what you know, what's going to be one of the big. Biggest mountain bike races in the world. Later, what did that look like at the very start? Like you're this was, what? 2003

Kevin Vermaak 10:08
2003 Yeah. So the the we rode the race in mid November, 2,002/7 of Jan, 2003 I was in Munich meeting the German agencies resigned on Yeah, Monday, the ninth, 14th of February, then Cape Town. And funny, the image that sticks with me was, you know, I'd only come back to South Africa twice in the eight years that I'd lived in London. And I remember getting off the plane, looking back, taking a photograph the plane, thinking about like a new lifestyle from here. And it was bright and sunny and blue skies. And I mean, needless to say, the weather was quite different when I left London on the fort in COVID February. And so just incredibly excited to be starting in 30 years old, starting a new business, and just feeling very, very bullish about your ideas, and then also very naive as well, because, you know, you can't imagine what could possibly go wrong. You just, you know, you just think everything's gonna work perfectly. And, yeah, I mean, so straight away I went about marketing the race. I didn't actually, I had a rough idea of how we're gonna do it, but I didn't bother trying to organize it, because I just knew that I needed people to know and enter the race before I need guys to actually ride the race before we could, you know, go crazy and actually organize it. So I didn't bother about working out, you know, what it's going to cost or anything. In fact, I I looked at what people were paying to do the trans op, and I thought I looked at the exchange rate between the euro and the ran, I thought, heck, we've got to be able to do this for a lot less than what they charge for the trans ELB. So that's how I set the price. And little did I know that, you know, our model was going to be very different, and it's going to cost way more than what it costs to deliver the trans L so I didn't like come up with a price based on costs, which I guess would be, you know, if you took a MBA approach to building a business plan and setting a price, you'd know what it's going to cost first. Or I didn't. I just thought, this is what people are willing to pay, and let's get them to come start off into the race. And yeah, once we sold out, I said, Okay, great. Now I'm going to start organizing it, and now I'm going to work out exactly how we're going to deliver what I've sold. Really,

Wade Wallace 12:23
you must have had a route to to show people, because, like, from the versions I've done, it's all private land and stuff. You would have had to have, you know, individual deals and stuff, did you that's something you worried about later? Yeah?

Kevin Vermaak 12:38
So, I mean, for sure, we had an idea. I mean, we, we said we're going to start in a finish in Cape Town. And I mean, some of the original, I mean, the original idea was to finish the waterfront in Cape Town, which is now it's the most visited tourist attraction on the African continent, in front of the pyramids, in fact. And, you know, I just thought, beautiful tourist town eight days, I think, 700 kilometers away, right. Start there. It's kind of like a trans South Africa, almost. And in those days, all mountain bike races were being called trances and trans that. So the working title was a trans South Africa for that I race. And yeah. So we had a start location, finish location, and we knew we figured eight days and eight cents, and we figured you should be able to get a REIT that would go from nasna to Cape Town in eight days. And that was it. I mean, that's what we basically marketed. We said we're going to stay in in race villages and stay in tents. I mean, I said people are going to stay in tents. I didn't even know if 500 tents existed in South Africa, you know, like those small, two main tents that people slept in in early days of epic and turns out that they didn't exist. We had to order them in after that sold entries, I realized there's no one that actually owns I can't rent 500 tents. So, yeah, so I had a rough idea for the route, and obviously I'd engage with guys to to be design route and funny, that's a, that's another misconception I had. Because when I was, you know, packing my bags in London, I thought, Great, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy a KTM. I'm gonna spend like, months cozy up and down Western Cape, you know, finding routes. As it turned out, within a month, I had employed a guy to actually be the route designer, and I basically buried myself in my desk and spent, you know, 69 days on a computer. It was not at all what I expected, but turned out, that's what you needed, I mean. And you know, I needed to be in an office, burning the money, not oil, and employing guys to be out there designing routes and planning and logistics.

Wade Wallace 14:44
Did you think eight days or seven, 800 kilometers, or whatever it was, point to point? Was that something that you said like this has got to be really hard, but not too hard, but what was the sort. Of a calculation you were doing around that, or was it, was it just basically from here to here? And as simple as that, what were you trying to make out of it? I think we

Kevin Vermaak 15:09
need to transport ourselves back to what mountain biking was, and certainly in South Africa, what it was in 2003 when we launched the event. And whilst my goal was always to be the world's foremost mountain bike stage race. You know, at the time, what is much more communicable or much more palatable to a guy that's gonna get on a plane and fly around the world to ride his mountain bike was that they're coming on a tour, let's say a fast tour. It had to be from, you know, it has to be from A to B to C to D, and to move every day like a traditional stage race. They needed to be seeing the country. They needed to be, yeah, yeah. It was more of this, let's say tour see the country, okay. But in my mind, I knew I wanted to evolve it into a competitive race. And in the beginning, that traveling aspect was crucial, but over time, we evolved it into this sporting spectacle where it was the world's best riders racing bull gas every day for eight days, and it became less important that you were moving every day and seeing different areas of the country. It became flat out racing. And that's actually what I wanted to create in South Africa. Mountain biking was a very far distant second cousin to road cycling. Martin biking was absolutely I mean, I think at the time, that is why we 25 road bikes sold for every mountain bike you had. You know, you had massive, mass participation road races. The famous one is obviously the caption cycle to, I think they were selling out instantaneously with a lot trip of 35,000 riders. Think, I don't know if it still has a record, but it was the largest individually trying cycle event in the world. And that happened in all the major cities. I mean, Joburg, Pretoria, Durban, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, they all had these mass participation road races with twin cars and riders or more. And Martin Biden was kind of like hippie sport. I mean, it was baggies and shaven I mean, like long hair, campfires, camping, dirt festivals. And, you know, I wanted to make mountain biking taxi. I mean, I wanted to make mountain biking as, like a high performance sport, basically change. I mean, make it more professional and appeal to assign a different audience that was currently mountain biking in South Africa. And, yeah, we managed to do it. What

Wade Wallace 17:49
was the market you were targeting in the very first one? Was it Europeans

Kevin Vermaak 17:54
absolutely in terms of, I mean, you can say the the markets we targeted. It was obviously easiest to go, you know, Germany and Switzerland and the German speaking countries in Europe, because I did have agents that had marketing partners based in Germany. And also I don't want to like and play the importance that they had at the early days with Epic. Because, sure, they brought in, added us. I mean, we had added US International as a sponsor. And it's quite a, you know, quite a big deal. I mean, like the Global Head of Global sports marketing for outdoor, and never been to South Africa, and we managed to get into sponsor this new bike race that only had a pipeline presentation. And, yeah, so we, you know, we did various things, you know, we sponsored a black South African team to go across and be the first black Africans to ride the trans art, which, the time, was sponsored by editors as well. And, yeah, we did, you know, arrange for European mountain bike team to come and do a photo shoot and at a launch in South Africa, coincided with, actually, the launch of the cape epic, 10 months before the first race. And so, yeah, we did quite a bit of marketing in Germany. But also, you know, I'd been living in UK for eight years. I had a network of, like, adventure oriented friends. And, I mean, the first guys to sign up were my best mates that had, you know, traveled to Costa Rica with me, and yeah, so I think in that first year, we had 21 countries and 25% international riders, and then the South Africans. Interestingly, we weren't necessarily targeting mountain bikers, because in those days, a mountain bike racer a marathon in South Africa was 50 kilometers long. I mean, 50 kilometers, maybe 1000 meters of climbing. They paid 80 Rand, which is 80 South African rand, which, I mean, at the time, was probably $6 or so to enter, um, you know, so that's the type of that was a mountain bike, and we had far bigger. Uh, events in South Africa and other sports that was getting the, you know, the A type driven athlete, training for six months, you know, taking on a big challenge, trying to, you know, competing, trying to be these, make that into the race of them. And that was more and running and canoeing and erode cycling. So actually, we're tapping outside the sport of mountain biking. And every year we would ask like, you know, did you buy a mountain bike, a new mountain bike, in the 12 months before the cape epic? And a good I mean, I think it peaked one year at 70% and generally, the early riders of epic had never done a they'd barely done a mountain bike race, let alone a mountain bike stage race before they entered the cape epic. Oh,

Wade Wallace 20:41
geez. So how did it go? How did the first one go in the end? What was it like? Looking back, I

Kevin Vermaak 20:47
was very special, I must say. So for me, I can't tell you that. I mean, I've never worked so hard in my life. I mean, I did like, three years of work, I'd say, in the 12 months leading up to the race. And I had, you know, one or two full time employer, two full time employees, loads of contractors. And, you know, we had 550 riders. I had and then a crew of, gosh, it was like 250 people working at the first race. You know, it's a ratio of one and two is quite high, and we took a lot of things. I mean, you can do a lot of things in spreadsheets. You can time how long it takes one guy to pitch a tent and take a tent down, and you can work out how many tents you can fit into a super link and what size mattresses you need in order for 550 of them to fit into one super link track. You can do all that in a spreadsheet, but you can only really test it like, you know, at Showtime and so, I mean, there was days of no sleep thinking as a skill work. And turned out, yeah, and probably Yeah, it worked. I mean, we had, it was amazing to see. Actually, it was like an army of people moving, you know, five, 600 Yeah, tents include the crew action. That was more with all the crew tents as well, moving every day. You know, riders would leave and a couple tents, the guys would rush with them up the next bit then, and we didn't really get it right, first year that, you know, all the tents were there waiting for the riders. But, yeah, I mean, generally, the writers enjoyed it. The next race. I mean, the first race sold out in three days, the second race sold out in five hours. And then the third race, we introduced the lottery already, wow.

Wade Wallace 22:31
So you were happy with the first one and how it went, and it was a success by all all measures. Is that? What you're saying? Yeah.

Kevin Vermaak 22:40
I mean, you know the fact that most folk went home and enjoyed it, such that they told their friends and, yeah, like I said, we opened the entries for the second race three months after the first race, and it sold out in five hours. And, you know, since then, generally there, you know, had various methods to sell entries, but always say that, yeah, it's a success. If people go home and tell their mates, this is the best thing they've done on a mountain bike years, and they enter the next year's race, and we managed to get that sort of feedback every year for decades.

Wade Wallace 23:15
One of the things about events, I found out the hard way, because I've run some events before is that typically you get like a surge at the beginning, and then a lot of people who wait to the last minute to sign up. But Cape epic really is an event you can wait the last minute. Was that part of the plan and how you were able to front load those you know that entry revenue to be able to fund the rest of it, or did it kind of just luck out and be that, or did you employ strategies to make sure that it did sell out very, very quickly early on.

Kevin Vermaak 23:47
I mean, having a race that sells art is incredibly powerful. Okay. I mean, once again, go back to 2004 I mean, there were four other mountain bike stage races in the world. There was a trans art which is like the, let's say the leader. I mean, they had, they had, they were the first to have the two person team race concept the eight days, you know, riding over the Alps, they would also be selling out as well. And then there was the crocodile trophy in Australia. There was the router in Costa Rica. And there was the trans Rockies, which was organized by the same agency that organized the trans ops. And, I mean, they were, I mean, the trans art, basically, you slept in parking garages or, you know, you brought your mobile home. But it wasn't really a race for this setup. And I think a lot of the others that I mentioned, I mean, Costa Rica used to in hotels in San Jose, two hours work on the finish line. And, you know, the others, generally, you took your intent or you had to pitch yourself. And so our format was completely different, okay, and, you know, to arrive and have six, 700 I mean, it was soon with over 1000 tents all pitched neatly in rows with like, marquees, 100 meter long, marquees where you had, you know, dinner for over 1000 people. Or dinner, breakfast. And you know, this big Traveling Circus was quite a, let's say, a ballsy pitch to go to not only the riders that entered it, but like the suppliers. And I never forget, like I teed up a safety official, and, you know, a couple other like the critical services, from medical to marshals on the route, etc. I remember having their first meeting, and the one guy, like, just sitting passing, oh, wow, it's not, you know, not sure if this is actually going to happen. And then I realized you already sold out, you know. Then kind of like, okay, this is the real deal that is happening. That's, it's serious. Same thing if you go to sponsor, you know, and you know, it's not a part one presentation. I mean, not the first year, it was obviously, but once you sold the entries, and, you know, at that time, it was way more than any other bike race in terms of entry fee revenue, you know, everyone just took this seriously. And a lot of people, you know, certainly the fact that looked at our business performance in the first five, six years, where, I mean literally, we racked up operating losses for five years. So, you know, one might say that, you know, you basically charging too little. For sure, we were charging too little, but we converted that demand into attracting sponsors. And so it was a trade off. Do you risk not selling art instantly and take great entry fee revenue? And maybe we earned on the former. But the reality was, it was very powerful to go sponsors and to, you know, whoever we whatever stakeholder we need to speak to and say, the straight sold out, or soon as we had a lottery in the third year. I mean, it was like four or five times oversubscribed

Wade Wallace 26:46
at the time those first five events, you said that were running at a loss. Was that a stressful time for you and how to continue funding it at all? Or were you always confident in cash flow and sponsors was able to top it up and so forth? Or how did you manage that?

Kevin Vermaak 27:01
Without a doubt, the most stressful and lonely period of my life. Because, you know, if the if the community is used to paying, like I said, I mean, there's 80 Rand, so that the exchange rate at that time, that's probably like five, $6 and suddenly, I mean, our first race, I think we charged three what are the 7600 rands? 600 $700 more than the trans art, more than the retail and where, I mean heck, we were eight days. And certainly in South Africa, where these events are typically organized at the time by charities and voluntary organizations that are raising money for charity. And it's like, wow, this guy's coming in to commercialize our sport. And, like, it was a lot of backlash. And, you know, there was this perception, and we increased the price every year. I mean, it was sold out, and we were making a loss. So obviously you increased the price, but not as radically as we did after five years. But, you know, there was this perception that this guy is milking the system, and like, making tons of money, and like charging way more than whatever, you know, what other events are charging. And in fact, I was losing so much money. I mean, the first year I was, you know, literally, yeah, I lost more money than our total revenue. I mean, like, more than 100% loss. And, you know, I needed to employ people. I mean, I needed to have full time staff to actually run this business. And I said it was lonely because I couldn't actually tell anyone. I couldn't actually tell anyone how bad it was. And I was 100% shareholder, so, I mean, I know that after the second event already, and we racked up, yeah, I mean, two years of heavy losses. No one knew except me, because and well, and there were a couple of creditors that I'd negotiated extended credit lines, but, you know, so I couldn't, I was employing staff that were giving up other jobs to come and join me, and I didn't. Couldn't tell them how bad it was because they wouldn't have worked for me and certainly riders. Riders knew that the money they were paying to enter a race in nine months time was actually being used to have all the losses from the previous race. Probably wouldn't have parted with their cash and gave to a business that was technically insolvent, and the race is only nine months down, so I just absolutely had to keep that so secret. And it was so it was so lonely, because the perception in the market was, Wow, this great race is doing so well, it's so expensive, and this guy must be absolutely, you know, creaming it. And it was a complete opposite. So that was very lonely. And then, to answer your question, how we did it, I had like, three phases of financing. I mean, the first one was, you spend all your own savings and you sell securities that you all the sure teams that you know it can give you the credit you need for the first race. Yes, and then I call the next round rate of financing, because if I could extend the credit line for just three months after, you know, for the suppliers that didn't, you know, that's the second race. And this really kicked in. I knew, well the second race sold out immediately. So I knew that I could deliver a good enough race in the second year that I'd set up the third race. So I just had to, you know, get a three month credit line with suppliers, and I'd get the entry fee for the third race, and I could pay off my debts for the second race. So I did that creative financing. I did that for three, three years or so, and then the third phase was when that had run out. It wasn't, it wasn't working. And got, actually got a South African, sorry, Industrial Development Corporation. It's basically a development bank that funds, you know, startups, etc, in South Africa and and, yeah, I got them to provide bridging finance, and that was great, because I kept that open for like five years, where just literally, from the like a month before the race, we, you know, all the big payments that we made until interviews opened, and we got majority of the entry key for the next year. And they, yeah, they came on board in after the third event, and it actually coincided with getting Absa on board as a sponsor. And a lot of people think, Oh, wow, when Absa came on board, you know, would have solved all that, you know, all the problems. But the reality was that it actually put us in the big league, because at the time, Absa was an Absa for the international listeners. And yeah, Absa, at the time, was pm, in a bank in Africa, was owned by Barclays, basically Barclays representation in South Africa, in the African continent. And they were the title sponsor of the spring bucks, the, you know, probably our most valuable sporting property in South Africa. They were the title sponsor of the final, which is our national soccer team. And bear in mind that the Football World Cup was taking place in South Africa a few years later. So yeah, all the corporate money was in football. They were also the title sponsor of the main Football League in South Africa, and the title sponsor the main rugby league. So it's like all the biggest sponsored properties in the country. It was sponsored by Absa. Now that's, I mean, sponsoring. Suddenly sponsoring this Martin by Grace up, and actually it just, you know, it launched us into this uber professional, sponsored environment. I mean, suddenly we were dealing with the same agency that was dealing with FIFA law cut and, you know, the spring bucks and the Bucha national team, and we had to deliver. And so actually, our first year of having Absa as a sponsor was probably our worst year financially, because of all the things we had to put in place to deliver to a mainstream sponsor that is definitely not used to sponsor mountain bike races. And at the time, it was inconceivable that a like a preeminent bank would actually sponsor Martin barking in this country, in fact, globally, I mean, still today, there aren't many, you know, let's say I mean banks. And then I can think of a handful of banks that are sponsoring for the cycling and Martin Biden. I can think of one or two.

Wade Wallace 33:19
How did it come about that you were able to get the connection to Absa and bring them on board.

Kevin Vermaak 33:24
Yeah, a funny story, actually. I mean, at this. So after 2006 I had, yeah, I had a team looking at the, you know, the ridge inbox, and you had riddles, sending emails, and even out of, you know, like Bruiser, just see what people are asking. And yeah, and I came in one year between Christmas and New Year. I thought, let me just go look and see what writers are saying. I mean, this is like three social media, right? So you This is where writers say what they think. And yes, I got an email from a writer that this signature was, you know, an executive assistant to the CEO at Absa. This is my chance. And I was, you know, I had been like, you know, been, you know, walking the streets before that. I'd, you know, I'd gone to, well, we had four full main retail banks, and so I forgot, seen the other three already. And without, lack. I mean, like I said, everyone was focused on football and golf in at that time. And anyway, he got a meeting with this rich sponsorship manager. And yeah, it was out of strategy. And luckily, he liked it. And it was, there was a small sponsorship on one of the corporate business banking division in Absa, and over time, I built the relationship, and yeah, now it's obviously within a group strategy, and it's actually the biggest sponsorship within Absa. It's the longest running sports sponsorship in South Africa, at the moment, of a single property. It's been going on for that's 20 year sponsorship. Really. You

Wade Wallace 34:56
mentioned something earlier there, earlier that I certainly have felt through. Know, you know, my my journey, and it's not something a lot of people have mentioned, but just the loneliness of, you know, not having anyone to share this with the problems, the solutions, the good times, the bad times. It's kind of all on you. And how did you deal with that? Did you have any mentors that you were working with at the time, or anyone to share this load with and help guide you? Um,

Kevin Vermaak 35:27
okay, so I had some awesome stuff, which, you know, at some point, they did realize the situation, and I shared it with them, and so we took it on together, whilst the still the, you know, the financial risk was all carried by myself. In fact, absurd connected me with a mentor, because absurd was also aware of the fact that, you know, wasn't working financially. And they connect me with a mentor. And so they are really good partner that expect and that they, you know, they weren't only a sponsor, but they actually were business partner, like a good investment bank should be. And yeah, connecting to me mental in hindsight, was pretty simple, but it was just double. I mean, we had tried some other events, because at the time, we thought one route to profitability was to get better yield out of our annual costs. And we did one or two other races. And in end, it was the advice was just, you know, cancel all the other events. Double that on the cape epic, and just charge more. And so we, we literally increased entropy by 50% overnight. Um, stand thing. Huge backlash. Sold out in seconds. In fact, that year we introduced the we stopped. That was the first year we opened the entries, literally, the day after the race finished. So you finished on Sunday, Monday, midday or Monday, two o'clock. We opened the entries for the following year's race. We didn't, you know, we did early bird entries, bam, sold out a trip to an increase. And whilst we didn't get rid of our, you know, accumulated losses within the next 12 months, but I knew that, okay, now we're safe, because with that price increase on the entities, yeah, and you know that demand, I knew that we'd be fine within three years. We'd, you know, get rid of our losses. What

Wade Wallace 37:18
were your constraints with growing like, maybe, maybe double the entries. And was it a consideration of, like, No, we actually have to make it sell out and keep it at that sort of, like, that razor's edge of selling out and being wide open. Or what was that calculation like?

Kevin Vermaak 37:35
I mean, the demand was such that we could have done four or five times the number of riders in the race, the limiting factor was, was not necessarily the demand. I mean, for sure, we always wanted to have demand, like an a waiting list. And I'll tell you a little about how one can get a lot of intelligence and you can really fine tune, like some of the subtleties in the race by having a waiting list and a lottery. But yeah, I mean, for us, it was more the limiting factor was, like the quality of the experience and service, like, I mean, fast, like the athlete experience, the right experience was, like number one. And so when we were moving every single day, so like, the first five years of the race, we had, you know, eight stages and eight, eight different finishes, and we moved every day to a new town, moving west from NASA to Cape Town or to stellen Bucha. And so that that is kind of a logistical challenge. And so the numbers were more limited to, you know, how we could provide an awesome service. And then, more recently, the limit is actually around just the trails. I mean, we've got, like, serious single track. It's just single track from start to finish now, and riders are way faster than they used to be in early years. But it does still mean that you you've got the winner, you know, the top riders leaving at 7am generally the last coming last take double the time. So if you do a five hour stage for the winner, at 10 hour stages, you know that starting, they got to start two hours behind because you don't have congestion, puts them in. It's almost dark when they're getting in. That's actually the limiting factor now, in terms of the total number of riders in the field. But earlier, it was actually around the logistics. But you know, you to move the Traveling Circus every day for eight days. It was limiting. And I mean the numbers, we had 550 in the first year. Then we went up to 850 then we went up 2050 and then we got 2200 and then it was that we found as a sweet spot, and we stuck 1200 for a long time, it was only when, like, very later on, in fact, almost, you know, I'd say, since my departure, where the financials are being ratcheted up, and the inter females a lot, and obviously that influences financial So now I'd say the numbers like being maxed in terms of getting the financial return. And but still delivering the experience,

Wade Wallace 40:01
yeah, was making it a two person race, something that came from, you know, partnering with the trans Alps and so forth, or was there another reason behind that? You didn't have to do that? What was the reasoning behind

Kevin Vermaak 40:18
that? So just be clear, we never partnered with the trans op. So it turns out there were two agents involved, and one agency actually had a fallout with a trans op. And so we worked with this alternate agency that had been involved in early days, yeah, exactly. And they'd been involved in early days of the of the trans ops, so they they knew it well and and so the two person team concert. I knew that it worked well at the trans ALP, but because we were targeting pros as well, okay, and I say, I mean, when I say pros, I mean, for sure, there were big maths and names at the trans op and other Max day races, but I wanted to get like Olympic champions and the World Cup winners and, you know, the World Cup circuit to come and ride. I mean, those are clearly the biggest names in in mountain biking, and they don't do other stage races. They weren't doing any stage races in those days. And they also all ride on their own, you know, as a single as a single rider. So we had huge pushback, you know, I was trying to create this program race. And the pros, the World Cup pros, no way. They ride on their own. And all of them, I mean, if they weren't successful in their first race, which was really the case, you know, they pushed back because they felt I could have won this race if I wasn't riding with a weaker partner, and my factory team doesn't have another rider that's good enough to ride with me over eight days. So I can't just write on my own. So we had huge pushback, but at that point, I really realized that this is actually the secret sauce. Okay, if you do this right, this two person team concept is magic, and you know, part of the magic, in addition to this two person team team format, is that you actually doing the exact same experience as the pros. So the amateur, which obviously is like driving the economics of the event, you know, it's amazing for them to be doing exactly some of the pros I needed, and it needed to be the same, like the pros to person as well as the amateurs. And take the amateur. I mean, you know that embarking on a big challenge. A lot of them might never have beat South Africa before. They might never have done, you know, eight hours on a mountain bike before. So they sign up, and they sign up with a mate, and then they go through this whole journey of preparing for the race and in Europe, well, in northern hemisphere, they, you know, you've got to train to winter. It's not a it's, it's the challenge, but to do that with a mate is awesome, and then to travel and come to the event and cross the finish line of the maid is just super special. And generally find people you know, end up best friends for life, or, obviously, could be a divorce, but it's like, it's most cases, it's like a best friend for life, yeah. And then for the pros, it was totally, you know, different. And we had it really pushed back on it, but all of them, once they found a partner that they could gel with, and then the subsequently won the race, they did well. They achieved their goal. It was exhilarating. They loved it. And in fact, all the guys that pushed back from Mina Schurter to Christophe Salza, they all now embrace the two person race, but for the cat epic. I mean, not saying every race, but the cat epic, and for sure, it creates a lot of drama. You know, everyone has a good day, everyone has a bad day. And you know, you fight through with your partner, and then there's, there's always huge technicals at the epic, just because of the terrain. And you know, to face those technicals with a team of two, you could say that, you know, the downside is that, you know, your partner has a technical, you could carry it on, but it's, it's quite a short sighted view, because you could have a technical tomorrow, so to solve it, and to have someone there that can, you know, help you with the technical issues as well. And and it, for sure, creates great TV drama, which we've had guys riding like the last 5k on rims, because they tie the blown out and, you know, partners pulling, carrying them on the bike, two guys riding on one bike. And, I mean, these are pros, but like, you know, this is how they finish the stage, and it's, yeah, makes a great story. You music.

Wade Wallace 44:27
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How did you get the big fish pros to come to create the spectacle and the media attention and that, how did that? Who were the first sort of too big that you went after, and they actually got so

Kevin Vermaak 45:29
the first race, I was lucky, Manny Heymans at the time, was a Namibian Olympian that was doing very well on the European marathon circuit. I mean, he had a nickname, Mr. African, and he would win a lot of the, certainly the German marathon events and and he, yeah, I teed him up. He was actually an editor's athlete as well, so teed him up. And then he asked Carl Platt, who was a German marathon champion at the time and numerous trans art winner, to come out and do the race, and they won the first race. And one of the things that we just hadn't put our heads, got our heads around at first, it was prize money. Like, what does the guy get a win? Right? And I know the night before, the night before the final day, sitting down saying, Well, so what are we gonna give these cars? That sounds crazy. I mean, today you never do it, but it's, it's just, I mean, we had so many things that we were, you know, so many balls in the air, and then we got some editor sunglasses, and club chat was sponsored by, obviously, you know, competing brand, and he couldn't even wear the sunglasses that he got. And so to get him back the next year, was like, Yeah, I'm gonna. And he loved the experience. And but to get him back, and just like, you know, convince him, okay, cool, you know, we're gonna make all these changes. And, okay, cool, he came, and then he, you know, he brought a rocky mountain team. And not, you know, it wasn't a team that was cobbled together at the last minute and, but in general, the pros. I mean, for me, it is always about getting the World Cup circuit, okay? And still today, if you take the top 10 on the UCI cross country rankings, or the top 10 in the World Cup rankings, they don't do any mountain bike stage race, except if they do one, it's the cape epic. And I said I'd come back to some of the magic ingredients about the cape epic, why it worked in South Africa at the time of the year. And this is important, but they don't do any other race, okay? And so I knew that I needed to get these guys, like the Olympic champions, come and do the race. I would spend months, I mean, literally months in Europe, going from World Cup to World Cup. So, yeah, we managed to convince them. I never forget it. In 2007 was our first race where we had, we got our date right and got a few other things right, and we had, like, I mean, I was like, seven of the top 10 UCI ranked riders, basically the World Cup circuit. I never forget Ralph Nat, who was a reigning mountain world champion at that point, he said, like, Hey, this is, you know, this is basically a World Cup every day for eight days, because he was racing against all these World Cup competitors in South Africa. And for a lot of them, it was like the first trip to South Africa. There were quite a few, particularly Swiss mountain bikers that were coming to South Africa to train. I mean, I remember meeting Nino at 19 years you know, Boren Fergal, the European, the junior champion there, I convinced them to disturb it longer, or to come back to South Africa to do the epic.

Wade Wallace 48:36
When did the female pros start the sort of getting the desire to come over and do it, or did that take a lot of convincing

Kevin Vermaak 48:43
as well? The good me, sadal said to me, in the year that you make the woman's prize money equal to the men's, I'll be there. Okay? And 20, 2011 I think it was, she came out and wrote, and yeah, we had equal prize money in 2008 that was the last year that we did the point to point, you know, the eight days, moving every day from nine to Cape Town. And that came about because same thing, I mean, Tom Ritchie was riding with Thomas fishnet, and it was Tom Richey's first time in South Africa. And he's, you know, Krishna, who had convinced he come and ride at his partner. And we it was the longest race ever. I mean, it was 960 K's. We'd edit a Prolog at the beginning, sort of a nine day race, you know, Saturday to Sunday.

Wade Wallace 49:34
This is mountain bike legend, Hall of Famer, and someone kind of synonymous with the cape epic, Thomas Frisch, Nick or Frisch, as he's often called, he was instrumental in getting Nino Schurter to fall in love with the race and continuously coming back as he manages one of the world's most successful mountain bike teams. Scott Schram friesch also started the Swiss Epic event, which later became part of the epic series. The. That qualifies competitors for entry into the cape epic

Thomas Frischknecht 50:08
I have was at the start line of 11 Cape epics. I didn't finish 11. The first one I did with Tom Ritchie was, I think it was 2006 I think the imagery I saw was kind of what made me go there. You know, riding a bike in Africa is something that that was attractive to me, and that's, I think that's kind of for all European or non Africans. That's that's kind of a safari thing. It has this, it has this adventurous approach being in Africa and being in a different continent. Usually it's always in a time of a year you just, as a European, you just search for sun, you know, because it come out of a long, long, dark, cold winter. And then when you when I've seen these videos and photos of the cape epic, and that was, was definitely something that that I wanted to try to,

Wade Wallace 51:27
Kevin eventually felt there was a need to change up the format and evolve the event away from a point to point race. And

Kevin Vermaak 51:34
as a few weeks after that race finished, that we had the idea that, well, why are we moving every day, like, why don't we start in Cape Town, and why don't we do two nights at one time and one location, or three nights even, and do these leap stages and just break the link to the start location that we've been using for the first five years. And it wasn't actually about the cost. It was actually more about the logistics, okay? And that was a, I mean, it was a absolute key change for the race, because the implications of that included starting the race in Cape Town, meant that you could have a press conference in Cape Town. Meant the riders could stay in awesome hotels in Cape Town, easy to get to, you know, fly into Cape Town, easier for us to organize. We're right there. And opposite line Cape Town. And so, you know, it became more of this. I mean, in the first race, we did the PROLOG on Table Mountain. I mean, you know, so became much more accessible to spectators. So kind of, like started entering the sporting, sporting mainstream. It wasn't happening, you know, in the bush and, you know, often areas of South Africa that would be non access, inaccessible for spectators. So that was the first change. The second change was the fact that the sponsors and all the service providers, because they knew they're sitting up for two or three days, meant that they would just invest more in the infrastructure they'd put up for the race experience. So where you see that that's the hospitality for four, 500 riders at the finish line every day. I mean, now it's over 1000 and the finish is over two, not 1000 hospitality. But you know, because they knew they'd be using it for a few days, they would invest more in the setup, so it was more like the feeding on the experience of the race changed. And then also we, we just bought lots of equipment. So we would set up those three race villages in advance, in like, two weeks, and we wouldn't bother moving anything from one point to the next. We would just, you know, make capital outlay, buy all the stuff when needed, and then just spend two weeks setting up the villages in advance and not have any stress with moving anything. And it just meant the race could then, you know, be a lot bigger. And I mean, you thought often said they're doing it because they're saving money, but you're into super link truck. Yeah, you save some petrol, but you still got to rent the truck for eight days. You still get over the driver for eight days. If you employing 10 doctors and 10 nursing staff, you still got to pay them for eight days. Yeah, you saved money on accommodation. But it wasn't really about the cost saving. It was more the format of the race could change, like people invested more into the race footage. And the most important was that suddenly we didn't have to move west every day, and the trails got better. We could, like, if we had awesome trails in an area, well then we would ride like, 80 KS or awesome single track. And what we found is that we're going through farmland of, and I mean, some of the wealthiest, you know, wealthiest South Africans, all those beautiful farms in this area. And it suddenly became, they were competing with each other to host the Caley and, you know, they would be building, at their own expense, amazing single track, because I love the ideas, you know, of having, you know, shirt come racing through their farm, and so they just, yeah, we basically had all these amazing trails that were being built on beautiful farms that might only be used once a year, when, when the Caley came through,

Wade Wallace 54:55
yeah, yeah. I know I never did it as a point to point racism. Competitor, but I certainly enjoyed the fact that he didn't have to move every single day. What I did, it does the the format you describe. What did it feel like for you not actually being able to take part in the event up until, I think it was 2016

Kevin Vermaak 55:17
it was, for me, this, the satisfaction of the race was being creative, you know, like, yeah, there's so many things now, which are you accept is totally standard in two person team mountain bike racing. But, I mean, gosh. I mean, we wrote the rules, right? I mean, UCI didn't have any stage mountain bike stage racing rules, let alone for two person team races. And we learned that the hard way. I mean, we had some rules that we put down. We use some UCI rules. And generally, the commissaires would be at the race, and they would have to try and solve things by merging these two sets of rules. And, I mean, we had, like, some big issues that as the stakes became higher, as teams were spending more and more money to try and win the race, you know, suddenly the rules that are being interpreted at the race, just they had to set up so much more scrutiny than in the in the first few years. And we had, like, some, I mean, really big issues. I mean, like, you know, potential court cases with, you know, teams in Europe fighting us. They sue us. And, you know, for what xy, you know, just Well, the way the rules have been interpreted. I mean, there were some, some years, where a different team might have won if the rules have been interpreted slightly differently. And I mean, at the moment, I think it's maybe 25,000 euros for 13 so, you know, Scott sends out three teams to ride the race, and they go one team on a win. I mean, the rule of thumb is that they spend 25,000 euros per team in the world of road cycling, it's not a lot, but in Martin buying, that's a big chunk of your budget to spend 25,000 euro per team, which you need three teams probably to try and win the race. So yeah, yen for 75,000 100,000 euros per team that you know, let's say per factory team that wants to have a team on a podium. I mean, now also the team generally come out at least once or twice before they had picked to get a climate house to the heat, and now they would come out for a month, potentially or certainly a few weeks in January, February, in advance of the race. So it's a big investment. And you know, the stakes are higher and that they want to win it. And so we had a, I mean, in in 2009 we had this big incident where there's some controversy. And I mean, do we realize that we have to start from, like, start with a blank sheet of paper, write our own set of rules, work with a, you know, sort of Google, top law firm, and write a set of rules and then submit it to the UCI and say, That's it. These are the rules in the entirety that are being used for the race. And we have a really good relationship with ECI, and they adopted those rules as the standard rules from two person team racing. So I think now if you if you want to be an HC stage rates, if you do two person format, you use those rules. And I mean, so I gave that as an example, because, I mean, for me, that was why I wanted to be at the race. I mean, I couldn't be riding the race if I had to sit at the managers meeting and get the feedback from these managers that are, you know, ready to punch each other, you know, so the host of things like that. And we'll, you know, it wasn't, let's say the writing was something we got dialed quite quickly. I mean the route and the experience for the riders on the bike, besides someone that you know, talking about the pros now, but I mean the actual riding experience, we got that dialed very early on the race. It was all the things around it that needed to be improved, but also to grow. I mean, like, if I take, yeah, the way we do our pro tech service, way we do our, you know, our hospitality programs, where we do our VIP race tours and events, where we do, you know, we do a companion programs where sponsors come and ride for two days and they ride e bikes around and watch the race. And, you know, we get celebrities come in and host them, and former pros and it's all like the soft touches around the race, which separated, which make it different from any other mountain bike stage race or mountain bike race. No, that's where we needed to improve. That's, that's where, let's say that's where the business was, you know, that's was the differentiator, and that's what I love doing, creating that area. So I spent a lot of time with that. And I think in in 2014 I employed a CEO, and I remember the 2015 race thinking, yeah. And this is, like, now, 12 years in, like, cool. This is, this is looking good. Okay. I remember being at the race and literally drinking champagne and having beers with some of the sponsors on the finish line and going, Okay, it's, it's done, you know, like, not too much more I can add to this. And I said, for sure, next year I ride the race. And that was 2016 I rode the race first time. So first race, 2004 12 years later, I said, Cool, I'm not ready to ride it. And I loved it. What

Wade Wallace 59:56
was the reality of it versus the expectation? Questions, did those two things align Absolutely?

Kevin Vermaak 1:00:04
Yeah, I this was incredibly emotional. I mean, I remembered, and yeah, I mentioned some of the loneliness and the stress. I mean, when you looking to lose everything you'd work for. I mean, I you know, whatever, you build up your personal wealth up until age 30, and you think it's going well, and then suddenly it's all on the line, and you're not sure if it's gonna if you're gonna make it, yeah, there's a lot of stress, right? And you carrying it on your own. So I'd had some low moments and and so then to to then be at the race, and like knowing that it's working, and you've got through all that, and then I just think you remember driving to the start of the first event and actually being, yeah, I mean, adding wet eyes, because it was, it was so emotional for me, driving up to start my Prolog and but what was probably far more satisfying was when I crossed the finish line on the final day. I remember the feeling of this exhilaration. And not not because of like it was my race that I crossed, but like, just from the riding, because, I mean, in the eight days when you ride the epic and I'm sure you experienced it like, you just get immersed in it. You forget about everything else in the world, and all you think about is you feel like a pro man. You feel like you're born to be a bike racer, and for eight days, you're immersed in this mountain biking experience. And you know, and it's all you think about, and then you cross the finish line. And like the way I felt when I crossed the finish line on that final day was like, This is what I designed. Like, this is the experience I wanted people to feel when they finished eight days of the epic. And so that was, like, incredibly satisfying. And yeah, for me, that was like, the success, you know, like, I wanted to create this awesome adventure travel experience with the speeding of achievement, and I had that from a sporting perspective, not necessarily from being my business that I just finished,

Wade Wallace 1:02:09
what were the conversations and events that led up to your relationship with Iron Man and them eventually taking a stake in The business?

Kevin Vermaak 1:02:19
To be honest, the relationship actually started with a Swiss company called in front sports and media, which, in 2015 was owned by Wonder Sports Group, which also owned Iron Man. And, yeah, they worked in front, worked very closely with Iron Man, and I had a relationship with in front for gosh. I mean, since I think 2009 was the first time I started working with in front, and I had said to the individual with whom I had worked with at infra, I said, like, listen, we might be able to do something, but you gotta come and ride the race first before, you know, we do, you know, expand our commercial engagement. And it took a while, but he came out in 2015 to ride the race. And you know, for me, that was important, because, like, the opportunity around the epic, it's not about buying billboards or, you know, or just setting the media, which is, what in front does they it's such a rich inventory of what you could give to a sponsor or how you could, let's say, monetize the event. It's the smorgasbord of opportunities around the rest. And to be honest, you just can't communicate it unless you actually immerse yourself in the product. And when you do it's incredibly successful, which is why Absa has sponsored the race for 20 years, and it gives them a phenomenal ROI. But you really need to understand how to measure it, because and how to and how to exploit the opportunity. And so you need to actually immerse yourself in a race. And it's absolutely not a product that you can do the cold call. And still, you know, commercial a time around media package or sell billboards in a stadium, etc, it's you got to be there. And so eventually, came out in 2015 read the race. I loved creating. I thought the next phase of creating would be to to build, like, build an international portfolio, but you really needed to increase, or you to build the category of two person team stage racing. I mentioned that these top riders, the only race that did was the cave epic in terms of stage racing. So what if we could create a few more of these two person team races around the world, so that you could start building heroes out of the guys that are actually winning this two person team race format, and hence you build a category, and the cave epic was still on the pedestal. So that's how you could build the cave epic. So I thought that I needed a international, global operator to build the category out globally. And you know, Iron Man, it's the biggest mass participation sports company in the world. Perfect. Partner, right? And I said my relationship with in front was, yeah, I've got huge respect for the company, and so literally when I crossed the finish line, yeah, so that was 20, 2015 when the Rand was tanking and I was on a ski holiday in a row. So we've got a place and HP super from in front came out a coffee with me and told me the exciting things happening between, yeah, in front and Ironman, and he'd ridden a race the year before. I said, Cool, when you come out the race this year again and bring the CEO of Iron Man. And so Andrew Messick was there on the finish line when I crossed the finish line and and we got chatting immediately. So that was after the 2016 race when I started. And the idea was, you know, that we would build this global series, and that the epic world, the capable epic, would be the pinnacle event of the series. And so that was the rationale for starting the discussions around sale. But like to be clear, it wasn't about me catching out and exiting. It was more about actually doing what I wanted to do in a in an honest fashion. The

Wade Wallace 1:06:09
Andrew Messick, the Iron Man CEO, he kind of saw Iron Man from from kind of ground level, and saw the the prom, not the promise, but the opportunity. Did they start acquiring races or building new races after that to create a series, yeah.

Kevin Vermaak 1:06:25
So soon after the sale, the plan, as a way, is to build this epic series. And I'd already teed up another South African race, which was very profitable model, smaller and absolute numbers and maybe not so well known internationally, but great business, so we bought that race and then bought the Swiss Epic and moved it to grab and, must say, turned that race around. The input from the Cape epic team had a huge impact on the success of the Swiss Epic. Bought a race in Croatia, got the race in Australia and New Zealand. And, yeah, next thing, he had an epic series. But, you know, and those early days after this acquisition of the epic was in us. I mean, there are a lot of mountain bike races in the world that were approaching us. And, you know, saying, could there be part of the series? And, I mean, there were tourist areas that were saying, like, you want to come over race in the epic series. And it was very interesting for me, because it meant that we pretty much got to see the financials and got to see the economic model of almost, I'd say, almost every race that listeners would have heard of at some point, they've probably had a discussion with the epic series or Ironman, and you get to look under the hood, and it's a very, very different economic model to the Kate epic. In fact, even the other races in epic series compared to how the cat epic operate. It's, it's very different. And, yeah, it's, it's kind of given me confidence also for my next venture, because I know that myself and the team with which I built the cape epic, we've got some, let's say, insights into building economic model, which is quite different at bike stage races to the most other amateur bike stage races. And I say that with the greatest respect. Here's

Wade Wallace 1:08:19
Thomas Frisch Nick again, speaking about the Swiss epics connection to the Cape epic and the ingredient that the original Cape epic format had, which made it special,

Thomas Frischknecht 1:08:32
knowing Kevin for for a long time, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin was also kind of The spark To start the Swiss Epic. You know, we like sitting in my garden here in in Switzerland, in close to Zurich, when we talked about, why doesn't Switzerland, with all the great terrain and trails we have, doesn't have something similar than the cape epic. And that's how, where the idea started off, the Swiss Epic, which he then kind of was, was in involved in the in the very early days, and I was then I became one, one of the three founders of the Swiss Epic back in the days, the epic series came a bit later. That was actually when Cape epic got sold to Iron Man. Then they started to build a series, and that's when Swiss Epic was then we sold the Swiss Epic to Iron Man as well, so that that's when it became part of the epic series. You but I have to say that in the last couple of years, there was also kind of a decrease on that being part of a big event. Feeling that we had in the early days at the Cape epic, everyone was staying at the at the venues. Sleeping either in tents or camper vans. And nowadays, if you see a whole lot more people sleeping in bed and breakfast or hotels and then just coming to the race start in the morning, which which, for sure, is more convenient for for athletes, but it takes away a lot from the from the vibe there used to be that also the only possibility to to to eat was in the in the event tent in the early days. So the tent was packed with two and a half 1000 people, and a great atmosphere, great vibe, and that kind of faded away. Now only the poor guys stay there, because they sleep in the tents and all the others, they disappear and then stay in fancy places. So it's, it's, it's time. It's, it's definitely time to have something new where I hope, and I think that's also Kevin's intention with gravel burn to get everything a bit back together again. You know, the places we're gonna sleep there will be, most likely not just a cozy bed and breakfast or a five star hotel nearby. So hopefully everyone has to stay in the at the venue with like in the same tents, and kind of have an equal, let's say, equal chance, in a way. You know,

Wade Wallace 1:11:35
Kevin served his earn out period with Iron Man, and he just announced his next endeavor called gravel burn, a South African point to point gravel stage race, which has similarities to the roots of Cape epic. So, um, you, you've you've stepped away, you've had a bit of time off. You're going to do this again in a different sort of in a different way. Tell me about the gravel burn and what it's like starting with a blank slate again. How does that feel?

Kevin Vermaak 1:12:09
Well, I've kind of had the foot off the gas. I mean, even if I was still involved in epic, I mean, I've had the foot off the gas since, I mean, I guess since you, since you've sold and once I was very confident that we're hitting the targets. But then, as you know, looking for different things to do actually. And I guess when I had the idea to start the gravel burn, it was just like suddenly, everything, all the all the pieces of the puzzle were coming together again. Because, you know, it's, it's something that it's an area I love doing. I mean, I've been creative in the, in the, you know, the arc event space, for many years. I've got, got some great experience. I've got some awesome contacts and networks and and team members in Cape Town as well that actually want to do this. And I love building the epic. And now we can do it all over again, except utilizing our skills and our experience and and, you know, I would hate to, let's say, compete to the cave epic, because it's, you know, I love it, and, you know, I'm quite proud of the legacy, and I'm quite proud of the fact that it's, it's going from strength to strength, even if I've completely stepped out, not evolved at all, and it's been like that for a good few years now. And I'm just incredibly lucky that there's a new category in cycling, which, frankly, I think, is creating a bigger opportunity than the one in which we capitalized 20 years ago. You know, I think gravel riding as a as a Pro Am mass participation event, for sure, can be bigger than than a Martin Buck event, and for a host of reasons. And so I'm like, Wow. You know, this is you can, you can do, I want to say Not, not the same again. But it's like, you know, you certainly playing a space that you know very well. You do that much faster because of your network and the nature of gravel riding and the and the and the market. I mean, the guys that actually, the folk that are around the world gravel riding are, you know, more numerous. And I want to say that the potential pros that are doing these races are more valuable as media. Let's say, you know, you can create more valuable media around them. And so I think that a gravel stage race, and there is somewhat, you know, similar economic model, or similar model to the Cape epic, has huge potential, I think, bigger than the cape epic. So I'm like, I'm doubling downward. And yeah, we've tell

Wade Wallace 1:14:51
me the concept that you've settled on, what's the concept you've settled on, what's the format.

Kevin Vermaak 1:14:57
So I mean some key things, big. Was, do we do solo or teams of two? Because, like I said earlier, you know, the team of two is the secret sauce for mountain bike stage racing, but for gravel riding, we've chosen a solo race for three reasons. The first is, I mean, the format for racing is established, and in terms of solo riders and also the factory teams, well, the arts in your factory teams, you know, like, generally, the pros in gravel racing, or, you know, their own collection of sponsors. I mean, they're privateers, essentially. And so for them to find another route of, you know, it would just be another hurdle to try and get a rider with complimentary sponsors and budgets that are in the same, you know, in the same realm, it's there. And then the third reason is that for safety. Because, you know, if you cruising along like 40k is an hour, and a peloton of 100 and you're doing that, are you doing that for, you know, an hour, maybe. And you know, with the epic it's easy to look back for your partner, because you get a bit of single tracking here, but slower look like still there. Cool. We're together. Gosh, I don't want to give any reason to any rider. I mean, especially if you go, you know, into the amateur ranks, for them to be looking back for their partner at 40k an hour on a gravel road surrounded by another 100 riders being at speed. It's like because I know from the cycle turn Caton, it's number one cause of accidents, where whole peloton goes down in amateur ranks, because some guys looking back or waving to his family on the overhead bridge. So you got the safety factor, and that's why we said no, definitely go for solar. But because of you know, because of what we know from the ethic that you know this, this camaraderie of coming up with your your make we are. We're doing like, let's say, some service packages and some upgrade options that you need to do as a team of two. So you can buy a mobile home option with a driver provided by the race as a team of two. So you would, you know, you'd be in a mobile home together, or various like accommodation upgrades you'd do as a either with your life partner or your riding partner. And also, you're going to give the ability to buy a two pack entry, because if you're in Uruguay, and you heard about this race in South Africa, and you want to, you know, you get all excited about traveling south Africa, and you, you want to do it. You're mate, right? And if the race is setting up, you know, you don't get an entry, and then your mate doesn't get an entry. So you'll be able to buy a two pack and buy two entries. And it might, we might actually increase that number so you can do, like a typical Shopping Cart by, you know, potentially by four or entries into the race. And then you can four of you can get travel to the race together, and it, you know, it sounds odd, because maybe other races that might not sell out so quickly. I think our race is going to sell out very quickly. So it's quite important to add that locked in, as you know, you can travel with friends,

Wade Wallace 1:18:01
and it's, it's point to point, isn't it? Yes, over seven stages. Yeah. How come you went back to that after your learnings with Caley? Yeah.

Kevin Vermaak 1:18:10
So I definitely wouldn't try this, you know, 10 years ago, but I think that we're going in with our eyes wide open, and I think the spirit of gravel is about adventure and exploring and doing long distances and actually seeing the country and seeing the terrain that you're riding through, you know, with the epic it's, you know, you've got bleeding eyeballs at the top of the pass, and you then you go down as fast as you can. You don't even see the view, you know. You don't even know where you're riding. Okay? It's you just focusing on the, you know, the 10 meters in front of you, and you make, me make sure you're staying upright. And we want to create more of a all around experience. Now, 24 hour experience in at the gravel burn where, sure, it's a race, but it's more of like a racing experience. That's, I think it's going to be quite unique, because you're going to beautiful area of South Africa. It's an area where, you know, not very many bike races have taken place over the years. And it's, I mean, the most beautiful, long, desolate gravel roads through an area where there's actually game. I mean, you'll see animals. I mean, when we stood up test ride a few weeks back, you literally, you riding these giraffes on the side, loads of different types of Antelope when we go through the game reserves, you know, there's, I mean, literally, we saw a rhino from from the bike elephants. And so it's a beautiful area of the country. And you know, it's, you just got to do distance to see these areas of the country, and we're approaching the logistics completely differently. We're not going to be moving things from one camp to the next. We're literally investing in infrastructure. We've always got a bit more capital throughout it now, um, we're investing in infrastructure, and we're partnering with landowners to actually build camps. And it's you can do it because you're in an area of the country where, um. Yeah, and farms are massive. I mean, really, really big. It's, you know, it's a, it's not wine country, like, where the Cape Air picture versus it's in either big game or hunting or Marina sheep farming. And it's just, you know, there's just farmers have got much bigger pieces of land, so we building huge villages, and that is, it will hopefully take a large number of riders and and take them to parts of South Africa, where very few cyclists have been. Before,

Wade Wallace 1:20:30
you mentioned you had a vision for Cape epic from the start about, I think you said building the biggest, the world's biggest mountain bike stage race in the world, something like that. Do you have a similar vision, or a vision that you're kind of stating right now for the gravel burn that you can state? Or would you rather keep that private, since it hasn't started yet?

Kevin Vermaak 1:20:54
Has anyone I mean, I'm hoping some of the listeners have seen images of the bivek at the deck already. Okay, it is massive, and it is just the people that are on the race, right? There's no spectators, there's no, you know, it's basically everyone doing the race and their support crew, and they're going through this challenge together, okay? And particularly in the years where, you know, the Dakar was going to, like, areas where it's like, just, there was no one, right? A desert. It's just a race, and that's what we want with the gravel burn. Okay? So not 1000s of spectators, just the riders and the crew camping in the desert under the stars. You know, big orange African sunsets and having more of a camp experience where we you'd get a tent be a campfire, you'd sit around the campfire, you'd have breakfast right there. You won't have to go after this big marquees and eat with 1000 other riders. It would be just much more intimate. And at the same time, we're calling it scalable intimacy, because we're creating this small called laughter, which is the African word for like a gathering where you'd have just 25 tents, campfire and all the services that you need, so basic repair services right there, massages right in your lap, breakfast snacks done other dinners, not all the dinners, some of the dinners served right in the lap, like you and 24 mates, right all mates that you get to know very well over the course of the race. But then this would get in a modular fashion, would be expanded to have much larger riders, much larger number of riders at the race. And we think we can create this, like scalable race village experience and and that, I think can be quite special. And, yeah, it's, you know, the land is, like said, we've got oodles of space so we could create these large de COVID X style race villages in the Karoo. And, yeah, it's the distances are going to be. You know, most days between 80 and 100 and 130 we're a queen stage of 175, KS, and it's seven days, 850, kilometers in total, 11,000 meters of climbing. And, yeah, I think there are gravel stage races out there at the moment, I mean, but I think we're going to create a,

Wade Wallace 1:23:40
I can't think of any, but I think it's, yeah, I think it's a great sort of new thing. Well,

Kevin Vermaak 1:23:46
I mean, if you take the cave epic, I mean, maybe there were two races in its 20 year history that had less than 1000 riders and it was still sold out. It was just, you know, when we were still building it to a number over 1000 but there's certainly no stage race that's got over 1000 riders. And, you know that full service experience where you you get, you know, three meals a day, massages, mechanics, race, hospital, everything set up in this in this race village, and there's, yeah, there's no, there's, for sure, no race like that. It's certainly in a big number, say, over 1000 riders and and so we think, you know, it's unique opportunity again, and I know we can do it because we've done it with the cape epic. And whilst we're not going to be copying the cape epic, we've got some, I think, some cool new features like this, this modular larpa concept, which creates that intimacy, which I think with what people want. And I think that that's the that's like the spirit of gravel, where you hear more so you're writing with your mates, and, you know, taking on the distance challenge with your mates, and you can shoot the breeze at the end of the day. You know, your bikes right there. You talk about your bikes. Can talk about the down the bike. And at the moment, the biggest grow races in the world are largely one day races. They might, you know, it might be a four day festival where they have an art ride and a show. Aircraft ride and a demo day, but ultimately, come down to one huge day on the Saturday or the Sunday, and the amount of training you have to put in to ride a 200 mile race is phenomenal. Okay, it's definitely more training and preparation than you'd need to ride seven day or throughout 850 kilometers in seven days. So we think, I mean, the barrier to entry is even lower than, like, say, the big one day races which are exploding, which are exploding in popularity around the world, in the gravel category. So we think this, you know, it could be very appealing to a very large audience of hope they want to do something different, but maybe the cape epic has been too technical for them, for whatever reason, and we're now appealing to, you know, road cyclists as well, to come and do an off road experience in Africa.

Wade Wallace 1:25:51
I've got a lot of people in Australia interested, so, um, including myself. So I can't wait if it's a 100th as good as the cape epic here, you're doing pretty well, and I I'm confident it'll be more than that. So, yeah,

Kevin Vermaak 1:26:05
yeah. Well, I must say that this started in gravel burn is it's obviously immersed myself now in gravel riding, and I'm loving it too. I'm really loving it. That's

Wade Wallace 1:26:17
Kevin Verma with his story on how the cape epic became the crown jewel in mountain bike stage racing all the way down in South Africa, even after I hear this story, it still defies all odds, which probably speaks to Kevin's vision, his capabilities. And as the Afrikaans saying goes a bore, makoplan, which literally translates to meaning a farmer makes a plan. Essentially, this statement has come to mean that South Africans are people who can make a plan and solve a problem with very few resources, with a lot of grit. If you ever thought this should be a Tour de France equivalent in gravel stage racing, I'm going to call it here and now, look no further than Kevin's upcoming gravel burn in october 2025 if you like this podcast, please subscribe and leave a rating. I can see that over half the listeners here aren't subscribers, so subscribing helps others discover the show in their feeds. This episode was produced by red bricks media, and the music was composed by Ashley deneve. Thank you for listening. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai