Filippo Colombo (SCOTT-Sram MTB) and 2025 African Gravel Champion Hayley Preen (Honeycomb 226ers) won The Ceder in South Africa, each making their decisive move on the Uitkyk Pass to secure solo victories at the first UCI Gravel World Series event of 2026.
For 2025 Cape Epic winner Colombo, the victory came at his first-ever gravel race.
“We were here for training camps, and this race shows up. So why not racing? Always love to race, also while training, and was no better occasion to also test out this new discipline for me,” Colombo said before the race.
In the elite men's race, Marc Pritzen (Honeycomb 226ers) took advantage of the front group marking his teammate, defending champion Felix Stehli, to power away after 25 kilometres of racing. He would continue on solo for two-thirds of the race before a charging Colombo overtook him just after the summit of Uitkyk Pass with 35 kilometres to go.
“It wasn't really an attack.," Pritzen said. "Alex wasn’t rolling through, and I kept on rolling with Filippo and then I think as I rolled through, everyone was looking at Alex, and I just continued on going. Then they gave me a gap, and you didn't have to ask me twice to go [up] off the road so I just kept on going. I realised very quickly that it's going to be a very, very long day, and it’s exactly what it was."
Colombo continued on solo, building his lead, before crossing the line with a time of 4:43:21, over six minutes ahead of his closest rivals.
“It was very hard, but it's nice, nice scenery. The race developed not really in my favour,” Colombo said, “but then I tried my cards on the toughest climb, and I got to be the strongest there, and I could bridge the gap.”
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Pritzen was caught by his teammate Stehli, who towed him to the line where they finished together with Stehli taking second, and Pritzen rounding out the podium.
“Every single climb I tried to face it as well as I could, but not enough time on the gravel bike, my body was just taking so many shots, lower back was killing me so congratulations to Filippo for a strong ride,” Pritzen added.
In the elite women’s race, Preen, Lisa Bone, and Daria Pravilova pulled away from the field early on, cresting the summit of Uitkyk Pass together, with Preen doing most of the pacemaking at the front of the trio.
"I think I worked quite a bit. The harder it is, the better. If I'm going hard, they’re going hard behind me,” Preen said. “It was windy, we had a terrible headwind the whole way back, but myself, Lisa, and the other lady [Pravilova], we were pretty much together until Uitkyk.”
Pravilova was the first to fall off the pace on the climb, and then Preen made her move and continued on solo to victory, jumping away from Bone.
Preen crossed the finish line with a time of 5:39:00.
“I just rode to the end, and I managed to do a bit of a cool down right now, like the last couple of bumps, to the finish. So that was cool," Preen added.
Bone secured second with a time of 5:42:23, and Pravilova held on for third place.
“We just dropped the third lady [Pravilova], and I was like, ‘Oh, this is lovely. Now we're gonna just ride to the top together. She had been so lovely to give me a bottle since I missed my feed and I was telling her how nice the bottle tasted’, and she just attacked me out of the blue, and I couldn’t hold the wheel,” Bone said. “It was a fun day.”
Starting and finishing at Nuwerust Farm, riders took on a challenging 151.2km route with 2500m of climbing, defined by river crossings, soft sand, fast gravel, rough corrugation, steep climbs, and rapid descents. After an early climb, the riders then ascend steadily to the high point of the course at just over 1,000 metres after 38 kilometres, followed by a long descent to the turnaround near Clanwilliam Dam. The return features the rolling Uitkyk Pass, with a steeper final five kilometres, before a gentle downhill run over the last 40 kilometres to the finish at Nuwerust Farm.
Lyne has been involved in professional cycling for more than 15 years in both news reporting and sports marketing. She founded Podium Insight in 2008, quickly becoming a trusted source for news of the North American professional cycling world. She was the first to successfully use social media to consistently provide timely and live race updates for all fans. She is proud to have covered men's and women's news equally during her tenure at the helm of the site. Her writing has appeared on Cyclingnews and other news sites.
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