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 Vermaac, 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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You could argue that Bonnie Tu is the most powerful woman in cycling, although she wouldn’t think of describing herself that way. She’s best known for being the face of the Liv brand she created back in 2008, but more than that she’s chairperson of the largest bike brand in the world: the Giant Bicycle Group. What does that mean? Quite simply, she runs the entire company.

Giant Bicycles is a US$2.1 billion-per-annum publicly traded company that produces millions of bikes per year, while also serving as manufacturer for some of the largest and most reputable bike brands.

Giant was founded in 1972. That’s 48 years ago, and Bonnie was one of the founding shareholders. As you’ll hear, she has been very influential in many of the company’s foundations and its pathway up until now.

This is the growth story of Bonnie Tu and not necessarily the story of Giant Bicycles or Liv. But they’re so intertwined that it’s hard not to tell one without the other.

In recent years Rapha has been one of the most innovative, aspirational and disruptive businesses in cycling and Simon Mottram is the mastermind behind the brand. He took the company from a single idea, with the premise of how he felt about road cycling and how he wanted it portrayed. From a single jersey that wasn’t even ready in time for the company launch during in 2004, he build Rapha into the darling child of cycling brands that inspired an entirely new market of ‘micro apparel brands’ and showed many others of the cycling industry the power of storytelling and looking at the sport differently.

This is Simon’s remarkable story of how he built Rapha.