Taming the Untamed: Producing the 2026 Absa Cape EPIC Mountain-Bike Race

BIGSHOT Media, with support from Teradek, produced untamed African mountain-bike race' with daily coverage and highlights show

The 2026 Absa Cape EPIC, an Iron Man Group Race that took place March 15-22, is viewed as the world's top mountain-bike stage race. The eight-day endurance race, set in South Africa's Western Cape region, traversed 430-plus miles across a rugged landscape, mountainous terrain, and areas of low connectivity, making it extremely difficult to capture content and broadcast live.

The Iron Man Group worked with BIGSHOT Media, with wide-ranging support from Teradek live wireless video transmission, to produce a live broadcast and daily highlights from the race, which featured riders from more than 50 countries.

It is tough for the crew, says BIGSHOT Media owner Mark Le Roux. They're out there for eight, nine days. They're sleeping in tents every night. Come rain, hell, or high water, they're out there. They're on motorbikes. They're physically challenged every day. Dangerous as hell, the guys are coming back with the goods. Year after year, we have the same crew, and they just want to be there. They're putting their hands up every year, like, Hey, you're choosing me, right?' That goes to show that we've got a fantastic team effort.

BIGSHOT Media worked with a service provider and South African mobile-communications company Vodacom to construct multiple temporary towers - coverage on wheels, according to Le Roux - in developing production plans for the race. As part of the planning, bike riders rode the competition routes with the Teradek equipment to see where coverage might be missing.

In the last few years, our coverage has definitely been becoming a lot better, says Le Roux. If you look at the last few days that we've covered, we had brilliant coverage. Our pictures are looking glossy. We're getting fantastic mileage out of the Teradek units, and it can only get better if we can bring connectivity to the forefront.

The new-tech deployment that served as the foundation for the wireless-transmission workflow at 2026 Absa Cape Epic was a collaborative effort of multiple groups, according to Derek Nickell, product manager, Prism Jetpack, Teradek. He worked with designers at Lowepro, an engineering group from SmallHD, and the engineering team at Teradek to develop the technology, which comprised a Teradek Prism backpack and Teradek Prism Jetpack video encoders.

Teradek supplied Prism backpacks that carried eight 5G modems. In 2025, production coverage of the race deployed six to eight new backpacks and encoders serving as paired sets, he says. This year, the operation used multiple backpack-ready Jetpacks containing eight modems.

You have a 1,200-nit monitor that's daylight-viewable and has color balance and peaking and all the things that SmallHD comes with, Nickell explains. But it also has the tools to manipulate and control your encoder from IFB to stream settings, destinations, and return video. Because it is a bonded backpack and has eight 5G global modems in it, it can return the video to the monitor itself.

Video shooters didn't have to carry a separate monitor. It was already hooked up with a single USB cable and powered, with all the controls for audio and video.

Teradek Prism Jetpack video encoders deployed for the 2026 Absa Cape EPIC mountain-bike race featured a 1,200-nit monitor. I went so far as to put ridges along the bottom of it so that you could drop the pack on the ground, Nickell points out. You don't have to leave it standing up against something, leaning up against something. It's just quick, deployable, and done.

It's perfect for these guys at Cape Epic, he continues. [They] just drop this thing, start shooting, and pull the monitor up if they need it. They have that return video from production so they know when they're on, when they're not. It is that one-man band where you can say, Hey, I know where I'm at. I know what I'm doing, and I know my signal's good going out to the studio.'

For the race, production had a base station in a town called Somerset West, part of Cape Town. The camera complement featured multiple camera platforms in addition to one helicopter following the male leaders and another tracking the female leaders. Additionally, motorbikes outfitted with a drone covered each category of riders, and e-bikes also followed the men and women.

At the start and finish lines, there were three or four fixed cameras during the week. For the race prologue and grand finale, the number increased to seven. All cameras were tied into the same network, with NTT serving as internet supplier for the race.

On all the cameras, there was onboard audio, according to Le Roux. Coverage via the e-bikes allowed in-studio commentators to speak live to camera operators, enabled by a Unity communication system and software application.

According to Christo Toua, brand manager, Absa Cape Epic, the helicopter pilots and multiple motorbike riders were familiar with the geography and mountainous terrain of the Western Cape area and knew where the power lines and various wind drafts were. That familiarity ensured not only safe operations in the terrain but also the ability to capture the best picture possible for broadcast.

All production footage was forced to the studio, where it was decoded via Teradek. There was also no need for a traveling outside-broadcast crew, which minimized costs, Le Roux says.

To splice clips for a 26-minute daily highlights show, three editors sitting together in a bay received cards coming off the cameras. One editor concentrated on the men's race, another focused on the women, and the third editor incorporated other aspects of the race coverage into the recap. A script writer then created the co

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