Long race has short distance between top two
Lakata wins by just 11 seconds and is the first to finish under six hours.
So often in an ultra-distance mountain bike racing epic like the Leadville Trail 100, the stories originate from the back of the pack, where competitors suffer and struggle so mightily just to finish before the 12-hour cutoff.
But at Saturday’s 22nd edition of the LT100 Mountain Bike Race, the stories — and the suffering — were front and center.
Reigning UCI cross country men’s world champion Alban Lakata of Austria broke his own course record and established an even higher bar by becoming the first rider to finish the 100mile race above 10,000 feet in less than six hours. His time of 5:58:35 toppled his previous mark of 6:04:01 and bested Topeak Ergon teammate Kristian Hynek of the Czech Republic by just 11 seconds (5:58:46) after a dramatic late-race chase.
Riding for Specialized, Christoph Sauser, of Switzerland, was third in 6:01:00, beating Topeak Ergon racer Jeremiah Bishop of Harrisonburg, Va., in a sprint to the finish by one second.
“I still cannot believe it,” Lakata said from the finish line. “Maybe 1K before the finish, I saw (Hynek) and just said, ‘OK, now I have to go.’ I knew I had about two minutes to go, and when I saw him I just put the hammer down. I caught him just in the last few meters. It’s unreal.”
Not to me outdone, Specialized rider Annika Langvad of Denmark set the women’s race record and became the first female to finish in less than seven hours, going 6:59:24 in her very first start at Leadville. Two-time defending champion Sally Bigham from Great Britain finished second in 7:08:11, also ahead of the previous race record of 7:17:01 she established in 2013.
“It’s really an amazing feeling,” Langvad said. “I had the goal to break the race record, and to win it obviously, but I had no idea I could go below 7 hours. I’m really happy and really satisfied, and I hope that this record will stand a long time. That’s my goal too.”
Saturday’s victory was the third for Lakata, who set the previous course record four years ago but struggled in 2014 with fitness and a tire puncture. This year it was defending champion Todd Wells of Durango’s turn for a mechanical issue. He fell off the pace with a flat tire before hitting the 10mile point in the race. After riding a flat front tire for more than a mile, it was impossible to recover.
“Oh, man, that was horrible,” the U.S. Olympic Team athlete said after placing sixth in 6:26:40. “I was pretty optimistic that I could catch the lead group on the Columbine climb, but then they really opened up the gap and it just became a mental battle with myself to keep pushing.”
Led by Hynek, the group of five Topeak Ergon teammates set a blistering pace from the race’s 6:30 a.m. start. Rarely did any racer lead by more than a few seconds until the final checkpoint, when Hynek appeared to take control and pulled away from his teammates for more than an hour before running out of steam.
“Kristian obviously had a big problem at the end, and I saw him struggling. And when I saw him so close in front of me, that gave me wings and I was just flying up there,” Lakata said. “The whole race went perfect. I have no pain anymore.”
For the Topeak Ergon team, the race was as much against the clock as one another.
“I had about a two-minute gap with maybe 10K to go, and I managed to lose it,” Hynek said.
“So it’s a big disappointment, but on the other hand it’s a big success for the team, so I’m happy about that. And we both finished sub-six in the end, so I think it was a great race.”
The race field included 1,649 starters from all 50 states and 27 countries.