Untamed

The Absa Cape Epic is mountain biking's most punishing stage race. Eight days through the mountains of South Africa's Western Cape, riders in pairs, climbing day after day until the body itself becomes the data being recorded. It calls itself the Untamed African Mountain Bike Race, and it earns the name.

This series is the record of one rider. 72 stages across nine years, over a million data points logged on Strava — one person's sweat, climb and effort, captured in numbers.

These images are not charts. They do not show distances, splits or finishing times. They are an artistic interpretation of what the numbers carry but cannot say, the climb that does not end, the pulse that will not slow, one more pedal stroke.

What emerges is the texture of endurance, nine years compressed into a single surface, especially for the rider whose data this is.

(These are web-resolution previews. Images are not AI generated. Created for and available as high-resolution prints.)