tour divide 2023 finishers

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Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes are the first finishers of 2023 Tour Divide

On day 17 of the world's most iconic ultra bikepacking race, 17 riders have reached the u.s./mexico border..

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At the 17 day mark of the Tour Divide , 17 riders have reached the U.S./Mexico border, including two women.

Tour Divide veteran Lael Wilcox was the first woman to complete the 2,745 mile journey from Banff, Canada to Antelope Wells, doing so in 16 days, 20 hours, and 17 minutes.

Read also : Dot watchin’ the Tour Divide

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lael Wilcox (@laelwilcox)

Katya Rakhmatulina, a first-time completer from California, was less than a day behind, at 17 days, 8 hours, and 48 minutes.

Although at times Wilcox was on pace to beat her 2015 record of 15 days, 10 hours, 59 minutes, the 36-year-old suffered from gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms around the two-week mark and took some time to rest and seek medical care.

Ulrich Bartholmoes of Germany was the first person to complete the race, with a remarkable time of 14 days, 3 hours, and 23 minutes. His time is the second-fastest time ever recorded; Mike Hall’s 2016 record of 13 days, 22 hours, and 51 minutes remains untouched.

Justinas Leveika of Lithuania, who like Bartholomoes has an extensive bikepacking race palmares but was a Tour Divide rookie, put in another sub-15 hour record, arriving to the border in 14 days, 16 hours, and 57 minutes.

Joe Nation of New Zealand was the third finisher.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ulrich Bartholmoes (@ubartholmoes)

The Tour Divide grand départ starts on the second Friday of June every year, and no year is the same in terms of conditions, weather, or competition. This year saw a more international field than ever. Women and non-binary riders made up 20 of the roughly 200 participants.

While there was less fresh snow to contend with in this year’s race, riders still encountered stubborn winter leftovers on high passes. Rain, and then mud proved to be an issue in Montana and Wyoming, so much so that the three leaders spent 12 hours waiting in a porta-potty for the road to dry out in the Great Basin.

Unfortunately, the same wind that riders needed to dry out muddy roads seemed bound to stay, in the form of demoralizing and relentless headwinds, as many pushed through Colorado and New Mexico.

Nevertheless, there are still around 110 riders out there (some 70 have ‘scratched,’ or dropped out) — follow their dots here .

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How the Tour Divide was won

Rookies ruled the top three spots overall, but weather and other challenges stymied attempts at course records.

Ulrich Bartholmoes closes in on the finish in Antelope Wells after 14 days on the route. Photo © Patrick Farnsworth / Bikes or Death

A first-time Tour Divide participant narrowly missed setting the race’s course record last week, while the final spot on the women’s podium came down to an almost-sprint after more than 18 days of racing. Those were just two of the highlights from bikepacking’s signature event.

Measuring 2,685 miles/ 4,321 km long while crisscrossing the Continental Divide 30 times between Banff, Alberta, and Antelope Wells, New Mexico, the Tour Divide is notoriously hard. Preparing for the event can take years; however, chasing Tour Divide records isn’t just about preparation. 

“I stated it clearly beforehand,” said men’s winner Ulrich Bartholmoes, “that I came here to take the win and the record. But I was also realistic. I was well aware that 20% of this was in my control and 80% depended on external conditions or what the trail wanted to allow me to do.”

And when things kicked off in Banff, on June 9, 2023, conditions felt prime for a fast edition. The start list included notable course veterans and recordholders like Lael Wilcox and Alexandera Houchin alongside Tour Divide rookies Bartholmoes, Justinas Leveika, Jens Van Roost, and WorldTour pros turned gravel privateers Ted King and Alex Howes.

As the race crossed Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, it looked like new records were inevitable. Bartholmoes, Van Roost, and Leveika outpaced Mike Hall’s course record, set in 2016, significantly. But the traverse across the Great Divide Basin between Atlantic City and Wamsutter quickly upended any expectations. Wet conditions ground the three leaders to a standstill, peanut butter mud clogging their drivetrains and impeding progress. It took the trio nearly 24 hours to complete that 100-mile section and they fell hours behind Hall’s pace. Just 24 hours later, eventual fourth-place finisher Steven Le Hyaric would cross the same ground in just nine hours as it dried out.

The three race leaders played leapfrog throughout Colorado. While they rarely rode together, they watched each other closely while riding their own paces.

“It was surprising to me that we stuck together for such a long time,” said Bartholmoes. “I’ve never had this and it affected the race. At some points, it felt like a group ride.”

By Salida, Colorado, Van Roost had fallen behind the pace and he scratched before Del Norte with intolerable and soon-to-be unsafe nerve damage to his hands because he could barely grip his handlebars. He wasn’t alone; 69 riders have scratched, including King, who suffered rhabdomyolysis, Sarah Swallow, and John and Mira, the human-canine pair we highlighted in The Tour Divide is Bikepacking at its Best .

Bartholmoes and Leveika continued to battle for the win, but by Cuba, New Mexico, Bartholmoes put in a big push to temporarily catch Hall’s record dot on Trackleaders and held the lead through to the finish. His overall time, 14 days, 3 hours, 23 minutes, is the second-fastest Tour Divide time, trailing just 4.5 hours behind Hall. Leveika finished second, thirteen hours later and Joe Nation completed the men’s podium early the following day.

“I’m just happy with my time and my entire ride,” said Bartholmoes. “I never met Mike, but people that I talked to say he loved competition and I love competition. Just trying to chase his dot throughout this race makes me proud that I could keep up with him. That’s enough for me.”

The women’s podium race played out similarly. Wilcox started strongly, outpacing her 2015 dot before slowly falling off record pace. She cited both route conditions and physical setbacks, and the race clearly took its toll. Illness and dehydration forced her to visit a health clinic in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she received an IV to replenish lost fluids. She continued and held on for her first official Tour Divide victory. Although she finished first in 2015, she was credited with the record rather than the win because of a course deviation. She set the current course record that same year, during an individual time trial.

Katya Rakhmatulina completed a strong ride to finish second. The closest battle proved to be for third place in the women’s field. Sasha Dowell and Hannah Simon left Silver City together with Gail Brown trailing by just a few miles. Simon and Dowell rode the final miles side by side and decided to finish together, tied for third, rather than sprint it out. Brown finished just 15 minutes later. Houchin finished later the same evening, lowering her own singlespeed record by two hours.

Although the race leaders have finished and traveled home, the Tour Divide isn’t over. More than 100 competitors continue their race and the broom wagons – set at 95 miles per day for men and 85 miles per day for women on Trackleaders – are still in Colorado, nearly 1,000 miles from the finish line. For the next week, official finishers will trickle into Antelope Wells. Their experiences will be unique, but they’ll share similarities. 

“It felt surreal,” said Nation, reflecting on his third-place finish. “Riding south from Hachita is so different from the rest of the route. It was just a slow, slightly uphill grind. It gave me lots of opportunities to think.”

For the past fifteen days, he shared a few moments with fellow competitors, like Chris Burkard and Ezra Ward-Packard, but estimates he rode solo 90% of the time. From surprise grizzly bear encounters to bike-stopping mud, the ride felt like a series of highs and lows. He’d forced himself to avoid getting caught up in the race and stuck to his plan to average 300 km and 4-5 hours sleep per day through the first week. By the second week, he started sacrificing sleep and shortening his resupply points. 

“I would try once a day to get a 1500-calorie meal in,” he said. “I was loving the American-style burgers and chips. The rest of the time, I was thinking about resupply, the bike, and logistics.”

On the final stretch of pavement, there was nothing left to worry about.

“All of that was suddenly gone,” he said, “ and I could just tap myself on the back. There were a few emotions, for sure, and the fence couldn’t come fast enough.”

Course Records (days:hours:minutes):

• Men’s overall: Mike Hall (2016): 13:22:51
• Men’s singlespeed: Chris Plesko (2016) 15:08:01
• Women’s overall: Lael Wilcox (2015) 15:10:59
• Women’s singlespeed: Alexandera Houchin (2023) 18:18:26

2023 Results:

Men’s Overall

• Ulrich Bartholmoes 14:03:23
• Justinas Leveika 14:16:57
• Joe Nation 15:02:50

Women’s Overall

• Lael Wilcox 16:20:00
• Katya Rakhmatulina 17:08:48
• (tie) Hannah Simon and Sacha Dowell 18:11:13

Men’s Singlespeed

• Kyle Peterson 16:22:28
• Jake Colantonio 17:22:58

Women’s Singlespeed

• Alexandera Houchin: 18:18:26

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Tour Divide 2023 All News Items

About the Tracker

DotWatcher.cc

Tour divide 2023.

Banff, Canada

Running from Banff, Canada to Antelope Wells on the US-Mexican border, the Tour Divide is for many the halo event of Bikepack Ultraracing. There are both Southbound and Northbound riders racing self-supported along the ACA's Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, always with a few weather re-routes to spice it up.

24:00, 9 June, 2023

Distance — Elevation

4,400km — 60,000m

www.dividerace.com/home

Ulrich Bartholmoes

This Year's Female Winner

Lael Wilcox

This Year's Male Winner

Covered by:.

Peta McSharry

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Last updated 11 months ago

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This race is yet to start. When the riders set off, we'll provide detailed updates from the ground. Our expert commentators will provide written and photo commentary to better understand what is happening on the map. In the meantime, take a look at the route in the tracking panel and learn more about racing from our features and results . If you'd like to commentate for this race, please email [email protected]

Adventure Unpacked

What might the future hold for the Tour Divide?

The more things change, the more they stay the same..

As a newer sport that lacks any central organization, competitive bikepacking has been impressively resistant to change. What started as an underground, self-supported, mostly solo endeavor a few decades ago is still largely the same. Unlike gravel and endurance mountain biking, no large corporations have swooped in to take over the sport’s most popular events (à la Life Time Fitness with the Leadville 100 and Unbound Gravel.) No government agencies have swooped in to shut down unpermitted events. Unpaid volunteers keep trading in massive amounts of labor for a little bit of passion and love. Unpaid racers keep showing up at events whose only rewards are days and weeks of arduous physical and mental challenges — challenges so advanced that one of the sport’s founders, John Stamstad, declared, “No amount of money is enough for this kind of difficulty.”

Although newer events have come and gone, most of the storied bikepacking races are still pedaling forward. I have been writing a series of columns about racing the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, which has been a thing since Stamstad time-trialed the course in 1999. Although Divide racing has seen its share of controversies and subsequent shifts over the years, it still clings to many of the tenets that Stamstad established. These tenets can be loosely defined as “be true to the route” and “do it yourself.”

The scrappy, independent, and unpredictable nature of competitive bikepacking is why it is such a fun sport to follow, especially for those of us who are drawn to stories and characters rather than sheer athleticism and results. At the same time, the loose organization and absence in mainstream media make bikepacking a difficult sport to follow. The official Web site of the Tour Divide hasn’t been updated since 2010. The nebulous organizers endeavor to stay away from public scrutiny and potential liability by operating in the shadows. Riders only need to pay a nominal fee for GPS tracking and show up in Banff at the established time. There are no other prerequisites and no way to establish whether riders have any idea what they are doing.

This is also a fun but problematic side of the sport. Past controversies have included racers breaking into private property, racers rudely demanding services at closed stores and overworked bike shops, racers being disqualified for rules they didn’t understand, or deviating from the course because they had poor information. The first days of the 2022 Tour Divide descended into chaos when a summer snowstorm raked the Canadian Rockies and stranded riders in life-or-death situations. Canadian search and rescue teams had to rescue at least 10 Tour Divide competitors with severe hypothermia. It can be argued that most independent bike tourists would have made different decisions about waiting out the forecasted storm, or at least approached it with adequate gear. An official race, likewise, would most likely have taken steps to avoid sending a large number of underprepared riders into such dangerous conditions. The “race mentality” pushes folks to travel light and take chances they normally wouldn’t — that’s just competitive human nature. But the lack of race infrastructure also means there are no backup resources if and when disaster strikes.

It’s worth noting that the majority of racers did not require rescue, and nobody wants their hand held by authorities or authoritarian rules. But the real dangers do give me pause about uncritically supporting events that have the potential to draw larger numbers of unprepared and unsuspecting participants.

So what might the future hold for the Tour Divide? I don’t see the race being forcefully shut down, as fans long feared when the event began to grow. Really, if the 2022 storm didn’t bring down the wrath of the Canadian government on the “Banff group ride,” it’s difficult to imagine that anything would. There were also fears that the event would outgrow itself since there are no limits on participants. But the sheer scope and size of the event seem to be self-limiting. The Grand Depart line-up rarely tops 200 people. That seems to be an ideal number for a fun and competitive event without overwhelming local services and roads.

Given it’s already overcome its most difficult barriers, I see the event chugging along as it has indefinitely. After all, Tour Divide continues to thrive after a few difficult years. 2019 brought disagreement about the film crew following the lead woman, perennial favorite Lael Wilcox. Arguments divided the community and were never fully resolved. 2020, of course, brought pandemic shutdowns. In 2021, with the Canadian border still closed, a smaller field participated in a border-to-border race called “The Great Divide Classic” in homage to the original route. 2022 returned the race to Banff and a field of nearly 200 riders, although the large search-and-rescue effort in Canada cast a shadow over the event.

As a fan, 2023 — in many ways — felt like a return to the good ol’ days. The field of 200+ riders included gravel stars and an impressive international contingent. The women’s field was the strongest yet, with 18 ladies that included past winners and record-holders Lael Wilcox and Alexandera Houchin. The stories that emerged from the race seemed like they had been written by movie screenwriters. A dynamic trio of Europeans led the race until they were stopped in their tracks by impassible mud in the desolate Great Divide Basin. A hailstorm forced them to huddle together overnight in the only shelter for dozens of miles — an abandoned porta-potty on a trailer. They seemed to have a good attitude about it. Other stories included Lael finishing strong after seeking medical assistance for serious dehydration and subsequent issues with asthma. The top American finisher in sixth place was Peter Kraft Jr., who first rode the Tour Divide as a 20-year-old with his father in 2013. After 2,800 miles, three women were close enough to sprint for third, fourth, and fifth place. For the first time, the women finishers reached the double digits. It was an exciting year!

There is still ongoing debate about the direction of Divide racing and whether some elements should change. Recently, longtime veteran Jay Petervary launched a project he calls “ Great Divide Unearthed .” Since the first Tour Divide, Adventure Cycling Association has moved the northern terminus of its route north to Jasper, Alberta. In addition, the Tour Divide has introduced a number of detours and diversions over the years that mean the organized event no longer purely follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. Jay wants to bring competitive racing back to the full GDMBR while taking “ultracycling techniques to a new level” during a solo effort in August.

A handful of competitors take on solo “time trials” outside the organized event every year. Some argue that this is the only pure way to race a bikepacking route — away from the emotional support and potential logistical help of others. An apt comparison to these endeavors is the Fastest Known Time, which has been part of the ultrarunning and long-distance hiking community for decades. In FKT efforts, people take on established routes such as the Pacific Crest Trail or Rim to Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon. For most of these routes, the actual fastest known time is out of reach for 99.9% of runners. Those who still “compete” in FKT style just want to do their best, as they would in any ultramarathon. Some bikepacking fans hope to see something similar for the GDMBR — a wider dispersal of efforts that can be more inclusive of different types of riders with different agendas.

If I ever manage to ride the Divide again, it will likely be in a solo effort outside the Grand Depart. This isn’t because I object to anything about the Grand Depart — I think it’s amazing to be a part of such a quirky and interesting community of like-minded people endeavoring to accomplish something enormous. I certainly don’t want to see the Grand Depart fade, and I don’t think it will. But my largest barrier is my health — namely, allergic asthma which has become more limiting despite years of treatment (allergy shots and medication.) Mid-June is the height of grass pollen season in the Mountain West. If I spend more than a couple of hours outside, I start to feel like I’m drowning. If I want to have any hope of breaking that 20-day barrier that I still want to break, I need to target a pollen-free few weeks before winter — say, mid-September — during a year that also magically happens to be free from wildfire smoke. I know — Dream On.

The fact that I’m now in my mid-40s and not quite as naive (and thus not as mentally tough) as I used to make this dream an even taller order. The 20-day barrier isn’t even that special anymore — it’s firmly mid-pack even in the women’s field these days.

Still, the Tour Divide is all about individual dreams and personal adventures in a part of the world that I love. I hope to see it thrive, with or without me, for years to come.

Thank you for reading my Tour Divide series. Here are links to the first four posts:

A brief history of the origins of the Tour Divide.

My path to the Great Divide

Be Brave, Be Strong .

Following the light into the darkness .

Adventure Unpacked is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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2024 Tour Divide Results: Unveiling the Champions

The 2024 Tour Divide results show that Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes were the first finishers of the race. This year’s race took place along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, spanning from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, covering a distance of approximately 2,745 miles.

The Tour Divide is a challenging endurance race that tests participants’ physical and mental strength, as they navigate through various terrains and weather conditions along the Continental Divide. We will explore the 2024 Tour Divide results, highlighting the achievements of the top finishers and the overall performance of the participants.

Credit: www.insidelacrosse.com

Overview Of The Tour Divide

The 2024 Tour Divide results are in, with Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes emerging as the first finishers of the challenging race. Spanning from Banff, Alberta, Canada, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, the Tour Divide tests cyclists on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

Credit: propellerads.com

2024 Tour Divide Champions

Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes emerge as the 2024 Tour Divide champions, conquering the challenging Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Canada to Mexico with impressive speed and determination.

How The Tour Divide Was Won

Credit: www.globalcyclingnetwork.com

Tips And Insights From Tour Divide Racers

2024 Tour Divide Results: Tips and Insights from Tour Divide Racers

Gear Recommendations:

• Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes are the first finishers of the Tour Divide race.
• To conquer the challenging Tour Divide route, racers recommended having durable and lightweight gear.
• When it comes to bikes, many racers opt for hardtail mountain bikes with wide tires for better grip in different terrains.
• For bikepacking, ultralight and compact gear is essential to reduce weight and maximize storage space.
• Racers also emphasized the importance of a comfortable saddle and proper bike fit for long hours of riding.
• Training tips to prepare for the Tour Divide include focusing on endurance, strength, and hill climbing.
• Chatting with Ulrich Bartholmoes, one of the Tour Divide finishers, revealed his personal strategies and experiences throughout the race.

In conclusion, becoming familiar with recommended gear, following training tips, and learning from experienced racers like Ulrich Bartholmoes can greatly enhance one’s performance in the Tour Divide race.

Frequently Asked Questions On 2024 Tour Divide Results

What is the record for the tour divide.

The record for the Tour Divide is held by Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes, who were the first finishers of the race.

Where Is The Tour Divide 2024 Route?

The Tour Divide 2024 route starts in Banff, Alberta, Canada and ends at the US/Mexico border in Antelope Wells, New Mexico. It covers the Continental Divide from north to south, offering challenging terrain and scenic landscapes.

How Much Elevation Gain Is The Tour Divide?

The Tour Divide has an elevation gain of approximately 200,000 feet.

Who Won The Tour Divide 2023?

Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes won the Tour Divide 2023.

The 2024 Tour Divide has come to an exhilarating conclusion with Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes emerging as the first finishers. This year’s race saw incredible determination, strength, and skill as riders tackled the challenging Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

From Banff, Alberta, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, participants pushed themselves to their limits, showcasing the true spirit of endurance and adventure. Congratulations to all the riders who took part in this epic journey across the Continental Divide. Stay tuned for more updates and inspiration from the Tour Divide in the years to come.

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Tour Divide 2023

Ulrich's Winning Ride

14 days 3 hours 23 minutes.

That's how long it took ambassador Ulrich Bartholmoes to ride 4,345 km (2,745 miles) with over 51,000 meters (167,000+ feet) of climbing.

Not only did Ulrich win the prestigious race, he did it through torrential rain, unprecedented headwinds, knee-deep mud, and many more unexpected challenges.

This was Ulrich's first Tour Divide — a statement of what he can achieve, and what's to come.

Images by Nils Laengner, Ulrich Bartholmoes, and BikesorDeath

One of Ulrich's first photos from his ride.

Relentless climbing has its perks.

Challenge From the Start

On the first day of Tour Divide, Ulrich covered over 450 kilometers (280 miles). Only Justinas Leveika was able to keep up. One reason for this: Ulrich and Justinas simply rode through the first night.

Despite the large distance traveled, the beginning of the race posed its own challenges - the rain started at kilometer 160 and it didn't stop, resulting in unrelenting mud.

"The mud-clogged drivetrain made riding really hard and exhausting. Add to that the brutal climbs and the cold at night, and I was already suffering"

Shelter in a Porta Potty

Seven days into the race, Ulrich had reached the the half way point, averaging 326 kilometers per day. Perhaps the toughest section of the entire Tour Divide lay ahead — 150 kilometers of straight road consumed by a crushing headwind. And thanks to the rain, gravel had turned to mud. Ulrich had planned on 9 hours to cross the expanse, it took 26.

The mud was knee deep, it was raining, it was windy, and it was cold. The horrible conditions forced the leading riders to seek shelter in a Porta Potty. Wrapped in their emergency bivys, three riders squeezed into the toilet – and spent more than 10 hours there waiting for the rain to pass and waiting for the mud to dry up until at least walking or pushing the bike became possible again.

Done & Dusted

Ulrich took his last nap in Pie Town, about 550 kilometers before the finish line. From there he rode consistently to the end.

After 14 days of almost non-stop riding, it's best practice to first remove your shoes, then celebrate.

Final Numbers

• Arrival at the Finish line in Antelope Wells / New Mexico: United States on the 23th of June at 10:23 am local time (GMT-6)
• Final position in race : 1
• Total Kilometers in race : 4,345 kilometers (2,700 miles)
• Total time in race : 14 days / 03 hours / 23 mins — second fastest time in course history
• Total Elevation gain : 51,509 vertical meters (168,993 feet)
• Total calories burned : 121,000
• Total sleep time : An average of 3 hours per night for 14 days

Ulrich's Tour Divide Race Kit

Men's CONCEPT Bib Short

Women's CONCEPT Bib Short

Men's CONCEPT Radiator Jersey

Women's CONCEPT Radiator Jersey

Men's LUXE Bib Short

Women's LUXE Bib Short

Men's Ultralight Bib Short

Women's Ultralight Bib Short

‘Tour Divide’ Champ’s Secrets To Conquer A Mountain Range

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[leadin] Unassuming cyclist Josh Kato crushed last year’s Great Tour Divide, a self-supported race that crosses the United States north to south over the Rocky Mountains.[/leadin]

Imagine your longest day in the saddle. Let’s go with 100 miles….that’s a typical long distance endurance ride. Now double it. Then, repeat…for 14 days, 11 hours, and 37 minutes straight. And for good measure, do it over the most rugged mountain range in America and entirely off-pavement.

That’s precisely what the 40-year-old Washington nurse and endurance cyclist did at last year’s Great Tour Divide (GTD). His time not only won the 2,745-mile event, but it set the course record.

We caught up with Kato to discuss the highs and lows of endurance cycling, and his secret training weapons, including patience, a fat bike, and donuts!

GearJunkie: Two years ago, your GTD didn’t go as planned. Can you tell us more about that?

Josh Kato:  2014 was supposed to be the year I was going to accomplish a dream of competing in the Tour Divide. I was riding much stronger than I had anticipated and on day three of the race, in Montana (around mile 300), I ended up crashing in the mud and snow. It was a bit of a worst-case scenario type of wreck. I landed wrong, fractured my fibula, tore my hamstring, and gashed the back of my leg which subsequently got infected. I rode until around mile 1,100 before I called it quits.

That hurt. Dropping out of something I had poured so much time, money, and energy into. It was as if I had let myself down. I was rather depressed. I figured I wouldn’t ever be able to get time off of work again to give it another go.

So that’s 800 miles with a broken leg! How did you push through that sort of pain? Did you underestimate the injury?

Ha! I said I was a nurse. Never said I was a good one.

Yeah, after my wreck, I realized fairly quickly that something was very wrong with my leg, but denial is a powerful tool. I truly never thought I’d be able to get the time off from work to do the race again so I was committed to pushing on as long as I could turn the pedals. When it got to the point that it was no longer physically possible, I called it on the race.

I’m 40 and my body has been around the block a few times. It’s pretty commonplace to have aches and pains that don’t go away very quickly. In my head, I was pretty sure what I’d done, but also realized I probably wouldn’t incur any permanent disability from it. Of course, had I completely torn my hamstring rather than just a partial tear that would have taken a huge amount of recovery time. It got to the point that I had to lift my leg to the pedal by pulling with my hand a length of strap wrapped around my foot, like a lasso.

On the GTD, everyone hurts. Some things can be overcome and some things can’t. Perhaps being in healthcare, it’s easy to minimize suffering. Acute pain isn’t a permanent ailment. It’s just something that needs to be worked through.

So last year–you decided to give it another go! You must have felt you had unfinished business.

When I found out I was going to get the vacation time from work, I trained like a madman. I wanted to finish what I had started and made every effort to make sure I could.

I never trained with the goal of winning. I trained to finish. I’m not a very competitive guy. Except with myself. I guess I was able to achieve a level of conditioning that allowed me to compete with the amazing field of competitors we had last year.

“I think one of the most important things I did was train with a heavier bike than I used in the Divide.”

What kind of mileage are you churning through to train for the GTD? 

In my lead up to the Divide in 2015, I rode about 3,000 miles with an unusual amount of climbing — round 450,000 feet. We have a lot of hills in Washington. Almost all of my riding was on very poor gravel roads, trails, and abandoned logging roads. Very Divide-like terrain.

I think one of the most important things I did was train with a heavier bike than I used in the divide. I purposely go out and try to find the most challenging rides I can do. For a race like the Divide, a rider has to get used to going slow uphill with a heavy bike. It’s a mental thing.

Of course, we had a very mild winter last year in Washington so I was able to churn out some good rides early in the season. This year is making me get a bit more creative with training. Fat bikes are a great invention for training. This amount of training and having a job means I have to sacrifice a fair bit of other items in life. When I’m not at work, I’m riding, running, or prepping in some way for the Divide. It’s a huge time commitment.

You work as a nurse – does shift work lend itself to training and pulling in long days in the saddle?

I work the night shift. So yes, I guess it helps to know what keeps your mind going at 3am .

I think one thing that nursing lends itself to more than anything is seeing the struggles of other people. The body can overcome some pretty astonishing things. Some people have an amazing amount of will to keep going when the odds are stacked against them. It’s a good reminder to hear people tell me that they just wished they could be well enough to be outside roaming through the hills. People remind me every day to not take health for granted.

Obviously, you love to ride – do you cross-train to keep it fresh? 

The best rides are the ones that are not about the ride at all. I only wish that fly-fishing was a better workout. That’s my main passion. Nothing like standing in a river with a bit of graphite. Sadly, it doesn’t work the cardio system too well.

You rode in the Smoke’n Fire 400 last year. Do you use these ‘middle distance’ bikepacking rides as training rides? How many do you take on each year?

The Smoke’n Fire is a super fun event! Excellent scenery and awesome trail sections. My first bikepacking race was the 2014 Tour Divide. My second was the 2015 Divide. My third was the Smoke’n Fire 400. I finished the Divide in June. The SNF 400 was in September. I barely rode after the Divide. I had to go fishing! I used the SNF 400 as a test for myself to see how I’d do “off the couch”. I was very happy with my result.

It was also interesting doing the full sleep deprivation thing. In the Tour Divide, I slept every night. It’s a long race. These shorter races seem to be much more about sleep deprivation. On some of the last climbs in the SNF 400 I was hallucinating pretty well. I remember seeing Jay Petervary (who wasn’t in the race) sitting alongside the road petting a capybara. Also, when I rode into Boise at the end of that race I heard someone shout my name. I thought that might be a hallucination as well.

You weren’t hallucinating. I was following the leader board and cheering finishers at the end of the race–I gave a shout out to you.

Funny! Good to know now I wasn’t that bad off. I guess I’m not cut out for the full sleep deprivation thing. I’d enjoy doing more races but the work schedule interferes quite a bit.

“You gotta find a way to keep going. Donuts help a lot.”

Pulling in mile after mile … I’m sure it can be incredibly emotional, but on both sides. You must hit both extreme highs and lows. How do you monitor your emotional state?

The Tour Divide is so long that yes, you go through every single emotion possible, as well as some that you didn’t realize were in you. Riding mostly alone, pushing yourself to unfamiliar physical limits, that’s the easy part. The emotional aspect is the hard part. You gotta find a way to keep going. Donuts help a lot. In reality, I always try to remind myself that no matter how bad I feel, how down in the dumps my mind is, that things will get better at some point. All bleeding stops, eventually. Ultra-racing is very much like that.

So you’re 40. That’s venturing into middle age. But you’re at the top of the game. Jay P. is even older. Does endurance riding get better with age?

JK: Yup, 40. I’ll hit 41 before this years Divide. Guys like Jay P. and Jefe Branham are very inspirational to me. They keep going and going. I’d like to say I’ve solved the mystery of the 40ish racer and ultra-endurance but I haven’t got “the” answer. One of the only things that I can determine is that we keep realizing our gig might be up at any time. So we gotta get done with a few things as fast as we can. I know that I can ride much longer than I could when I was younger. Perhaps it’s an impatience thing with youth. Perhaps we’ve just learned through life experience to endure more. Or maybe we are just more determined to show up the youngsters. I do know I focus on the journey far more than the speed. Oh, I wanna go fast, but the journey means a lot more to me now than it did when I was younger.

You’re quite a photographer. (All photos in this post are taken by Josh Kato). How do you balance pushing so hard, so long, yet taking time to smell the proverbial roses?

The main difference between my touring speed and racing speed are the number of photos I take during a ride. Landscape photography is a hobby of mine and I do love getting a shot of a fleeting moment in a beautiful place. My wife can attest that my camera is rarely out of hand during a tour. Nonetheless, even when racing the best of the best ultra-guys I’m not going to pass up a landscape that creates an emotional response in me.

What kind of camera do you take with you on the bike?

During races, I carry a small point and shoot that takes decent images. During the Divide, I carried a Canon S110. It does great while shooting on the go. While touring I use either a Sony RX100 or Fuji XE-1.

Any advice on how to keep the camera readily available while riding?

I almost always ride with a hydration pack. The packs with a small pocket on the shoulder strap are very nice to be able to tuck a small camera into. I then use a carabiner to clip the lanyard to my sternum strap so I can drop the camera should I need to brake quickly. Of course this only works well if it’s dry outside. I have yet to try a waterproof camera that has the image quality I want. When it rains, Ziploc bags are my friend.

So what’s your ride schedule look like this year?

I don’t have a huge agenda other than having another go at the Tour Divide. The race just kind of sticks in your head. Amazingly, I got the time off of work to go again, so I’m not going to pass it up. Not sure I’ll be able to train as much as last year but I’m certain I’m still going to have a blast. Other than the Divide, we’ll just have to see. I do know I need to get some more fly fishing trips in this year.

Thanks Josh and good luck this year!

This year’s GTD will roll out of Banff, Alberta on June 10th. The website hosts some good background information, but for the latest check out the  Tour Divide on Facebook . To follow Josh and all the cyclists in real time, head on over to the Tour Divide’s leaderboard at  Trackleaders.com .

Steve Graepel is a Contributing Editor and Gear Tester at GearJunkie. He has been writing about trail running, camping, skiing, and general dirtbagging for 10+ years. When not testing gear with GearJunkie, he is a Senior Medical Illustrator on the Neurosurgery Team at Mayo Clinic. Based in Boise, Idaho, Graepel is an avid trail runner, camper, angler, cyclist, skier, and loves to introduce his children to the Idaho outdoors.

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Tour Divide challenges a fixed course annually called the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route . Not only is the Great Divide Route a true classic, its 'primary track' is pursued with consistency by TD athletes so that year to year, finish times may always be compared directly to the record books .

The Great Divide Route is the world's longest off-pavement cycling route. It was tirelessly mapped over a 4 year span, and published in 1998 by Adventure Cycling Association, North America's premiere bicycle travel organization. The route is highlighted by long dirt roads and jeep trails that wend their way through forgotten passes of the Continental Divide . It travels through Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and the United States of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico ( map ). By route's end a thru-rider will climb nearly 200,000 feet of vertical (equivalent to summiting Mount Everest from sea-level 7 times). 

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.   –Ernest Hemingway

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Find Out Who Won The Voice Season 25 Here! (SPOILERS)

The winner of The Voice Season 25 was revealed on the show's May 21st episode. 

We've reached arguably the most exciting part of The Voice Season 25 : finding out the winner. After kicking off in February 2024 with the Blind Auditions and progressing to the Battles , Knockouts , Playoffs , and Live Shows , we whittled down 40 Artists to just five :   Bryan Olesen and Nathan Chester from Team Legend, Josh Sanders and Asher HaVon from Team Reba, and Karen Waldrup from Team Dan + Shay. Together they represent a smörgåsbord of musical stylings, from stadium rock to country to pop.

How to Watch

Watch  The Voice  on NBC and  Peacock.  

Throughout the season, each had their standout moment — a performance that positioned them as a frontrunner in the competition. But only one could emerge as the winner. So, who was it? 

Find out, below: 

RELATED: Chance Wrote a "Fun Surprise" With John Legend For The Voice Live Finale - But What Is It?

Who won The Voice Season 25? Learn the results

The winner of The Voice Season 25 is Asher HaVon! 

Karen Waldrup  got fifth place. 

Nathan Chester got fourth place. 

Bryan Olesen got third place.

Josh Sanders  got second place.

RELATED: What Has Gina Miles Been Up to Since Winning The Voice Season 23?

The Voice Season 26  premieres fall 2024 and sees  Gwen Stefani  returning as a Coach alongside Reba McEntire (for a third straight season!). They’ll be joined by two Coach newcomers: Michael Bublé  and  Snoop Dogg .

"It's a well-oiled machine, so getting in at this time is marvelous," McEntire told Newsweek  about being a Coach. "Everybody knows the game plan, from the crew, the producers. Everybody on the show is so nice, so sweet and have been so helpful. I'm loving it." 

She continued, "I learn from [my fellow Coaches]. Every day that we're working on  The Voice,  I'm learning more from them how to let 'em down easy if they don't get picked up, coach 'em, and if you can give them any advice whatsoever. Like if none of the Coaches turn around, they're going home immediately. And so it's good just to say, 'If you want to come back again, try it again next season, maybe a song that suits you, one that you're really comfortable with and that really shows your talent,' give them advice and encourage them to come back." 

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How the tennis season schedule works – and why players and fans love to hate it

This article is part of the launch of extended tennis coverage on The Athletic , which will go beyond the baseline to bring you the biggest stories on and off the court. To follow the tennis vertical, click here .

The fight for control of professional tennis that has consumed leaders and top players for the past year has forced the sport to confront a question as old as the modern game:

Is professional tennis a sport of the Western elite, or is it a global game for the masses?

There is a pro match taking place somewhere in the world every day for 11 months each year. It makes tennis a worldwide phenomenon, with fanatical support all across the globe, and a staggering range of tournaments. It also makes it a worldwide phenomenon with minimal rest, confusing scheduling, and unrelenting demands on players’ physical and mental health.

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It is a blessing. It is a curse.

“We play the longest schedule in professional sports,” Novak Djokovic, the top men’s player of the modern era, said with varying amounts of pride and regret earlier this year.

That schedule, what it demands of players, who gets to control and collect the money it produces, and what tennis was, is and strives to become, are at the heart of the current fight among the most powerful entities in the sport.

Inside tennis' corridors of power: A fractured hall of mirrors where nothing is as it seems

• If you’d like to follow our tennis coverage, please click here .

The tennis schedule is what started this chapter of a decades-long struggle to bring more order to this fractured sport .

It will be at the center of the peace treaty that the four Grand Slam events and ATP and WTA tours will eventually agree to, which they say is slowly being discussed, pondered and battled over in weekly teleconferences. There will likely be some kind of middle ground between a shortish schedule in a handful of world capitals — a Formula 1 of tennis, if you will — and the endless string of tournaments, competitions and exhibitions across the world that exhausts and confuses players and fans alike, but also gives tennis a potential reach and depth of which other sports, except perhaps soccer, can only dream.

The Grand Slam plan is for a premium tour that would include 10 other events, alongside their quartet, designed for roughly the top 100 players. The tours’ plan represents the interests of more than 100 tournaments all over the world . They are already lesser in ranking points; under this proposal, they would become lesser existentially and practically, too.

The players, who come from places as different as Kazakhstan and Kansas, are caught in the middle, with neither plan offering a vision for their main problems: playing too much tennis , and not collecting a large enough share of the riches.

“Other sports have done a better job of this,” said Robby Sikka, a physician who has worked with multiple pro sports teams and recently became the first medical director of the Professional Tennis Players Association. “We have to optimize individual players’ health with the schedule. Other leagues have a mandatory number of days off per month, and we are talking about true off days.”

Where everyone agrees? The two initial plans don’t work.

“No one would advocate that playing just the Grand Slams is a good idea, or (that) having tennis for 50 weeks of the year is a good model,” said Phil de Picciotto, the chief executive and founder of Octagon, a sports marketing firm with deep roots in professional tennis, during a recent interview.

Octagon, like its competitor, the sports and media conglomerate IMG, has owned and operated tournaments and represents players. That would be considered a conflict in most sports and businesses but it is endemic to tennis , and has had De Picciotto involved in plenty of meetings attempting to resolve the current fracas.

“You need both,” he said. “You need certain peaks in the calendar, where the entire tennis universe meets and the world recognizes those brand names globally as major happenings in the world of sport. And then one cannot forget the absolutely essential requirement that there be a developmental runway to bring talent around the world, because you want the most people playing tennis, and to have the opportunity to consume it, with enough events spread out throughout the world with top quality so they have a chance to interact on a live basis.

“It’s the blend that is critically important.”

Then De Piccioto explained what has had everyone in the game on edge for nearly a year — with lawyers on speed dial, just in case: “It is not an easy problem to solve and getting people of such different backgrounds and interests to move to a middle ground has proven impossible.”

The global blend he envisions is what drives the sport’s economy, in good ways and bad. 

In a world where sports media is all about streaming, tennis and the various networks it has spawned offer something practically no other sport can — live competition (of varying degrees of importance) at some point on nearly every day of the year. The current schedule is perfect for someone such as Ken Solomon, the chief executive of the Tennis Channel, the California-based media company with a growing international presence.

In a perfect world, tennis would have one exclusive media outlet, and a collection of premium worldwide sponsors with a presence at every tournament and the opportunity to reach a wealthy collection of fans all year with a single deal.

In the real world, all those events cannibalize each other. They compete for sponsors and media deals, driving down prices. A company that wants to reach fans at every tournament often has to sign separate deals with nearly everyone.

The system simply doesn’t work. But the plan for how to fix it has so far brought more problems than solutions.

How to fix tennis

A little more than two months after a showdown in Indian Wells, California, that left both the Grand Slams and the tours bruised , the leaders of the rival camps are beginning to share the belief they might have come out a little too aggressively.

Andrea Gaudenzi, a former tour pro and now chairman of the ATP Tour, views himself as something of a transformational leader, someone who can unite the alphabet soup of ruling bodies under one vision. He has been leading the tours’ efforts to gain a cultural relevance that is closer to that of the Grand Slams. 

It was his push for a new, top-level tournament in early January, bankrolled by $1billion from Saudi Arabia, that set off this latest internecine strife. The Grand Slams, initially led by Tennis Australia, moved to protect their ground. Making it clear they would not be trifled with, they essentially tried to cleave the biggest and best-known tournaments from the men’s and women’s circuits to create that premium tour.

In March, Craig Tiley, chief executive of Tennis Australia, presented his counterparts with a proposed calendar for his version of the future — the four Grand Slams and 10 other two-week blocks for tournaments and locations to be named later. Everyone knew the Grand Slams were targeting the so-called Masters 1000 events in Doha, Dubai, Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome, Canada, Cincinnati, Beijing, Shanghai and Paris.

Leaders of the tours and owners of the scores of other tournaments across the globe whose events would be reduced to qualifying competitions for the big show were irate. Under the proposal, their sponsorship and media deals would likely collapse, the event licenses they had shelled out millions for becoming worth a fraction of what they had paid.

Saudi Arabia's new $1billion proposal and the battle to control tennis

Tiley and the leaders of the other Grand Slams have since come to accept that their proposal may have been an overreach, reeking of Anglo-American cultural elitism.

It would have meant top-level professional tennis in Asia, the planet’s largest and most populous continent, would amount to two weeks in China. There would be zero top-level tennis in South America, Africa and all the rest of Asia. There would be no tennis in Germany, the world’s third-largest economy, or in Japan, its fourth. Locally beloved events in Argentina and Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands? Sorry.

“You can’t market a global sport with 14 tournaments,” according to one tournament owner, who participated in meetings and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

Andy Murray , the three-time Grand Slam champion who has become a kind of tennis wise man, said the sport should go in the opposite direction , with a series of top events in South America, which has some of its loudest and most enthusiastic fans. That continent has also produced some of the sport’s most beloved stars, including Juan Martin Del Potro and Gabriela Sabatini. And here comes 17-year-old Joao Fonseca of Brazil, one of the game’s hot young things.

Both sides have now begun to compromise. Gaudenzi has grown less insistent the season should kick off with that new top-level tournament, likely in Saudi Arabia , ahead of the Australian Open later in January. He’s now open to scheduling it anytime during the first two months of the year.

He, and the Grand Slam leaders, have agreed that there has to be a better way, one that would protect the Grand Slam swings, keep the tours relevant and give players what they really want, which is more money, a little more down-time during the season and up to eight weeks off at the end of it.

The problem? The earth currently takes 52-and-a-half weeks to circle the sun. There is no sign that the year will expand to 60 weeks, at least not anytime soon.

Exclusive: Australian Open chiefs send ATP Tour warning letter over Saudi Masters event

Even before this new chapter in the battle to fix tennis opened, the players were finding themselves moved around like chess pieces in a sport whose fame and appeal they drive.

Gaudenzi wanted to build the tours’ power by investing in those Masters 1000s. They are the tours’ most lucrative events. So, they expanded them, producing tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue, increased prize money, and more eyeballs on tennis. Fans have gobbled up the tickets for the additional days.

The Italian Open in Rome was a one-week tournament; now it lasts nearly two. Madrid expanded to 12 days from nine. Next year, the events in Cincinnati and Canada will expand to 12 days from one week.

Tour officials say that with increased prize money comes increased tennis. Women’s prize money will grow by $400million during the next 10 years, in part because of these changes. Officials have also argued that the longer schedules offer additional off days between matches, so there’s more time for recovery. Best of both worlds.

Some players (Danielle Collins, Aryna Sabalenka) agree. Most of them don’t. Top players say that e ven these events wear them down, in a schedule so punishing that true rest is barely possible.

Sikka, the players’ medical director, isn’t convinced that these rest days are really rest. Longer tournaments mean more time away, and less time for the kind of practice and training necessary to survive the season. Exhaustion from everything off-court — travel, stress, waiting — increases the risk of illness and injury on it.

Jannik Sinner even injured his hip in a weight-training session during the Madrid Open , which is not something that top players used to do in the middle of big tournaments. 

“Rest days are not all created equal,” Sikka said. “Giving off days in the middle of a tournament doesn’t really help.”

“We don’t have time to do physical work,” said Alexander Zverev, a member of the ATP Player Council. “We don’t have time to focus on our tennis games.”

These newly-expanded tournaments also further divide the top of the rankings from the rest. Lower-placed players benefit because the larger draws give them more opportunities to play on bigger stages, but they are far rougher for the top players who go deeper into most events.

Iga Swiatek, the women’s world No 1 , said many players feel like they were informed of the decision to expand the events and make an additional women’s tournament mandatory without being actively consulted about it. There is a women’s Players Council, but there are no active players who sit on the WTA board. They are too busy actually playing for that. Tour officials say the players need to work through their board representatives.

“We had a couple of situations where it would be nice if the WTA took a lesson from them, like deciding kind of behind our backs sometimes about the changes in the amount of mandatory tournaments,” Swiatek said. “That was pretty harsh for us, because these are literally the topics that influence our lives and our, and our recovery time.”

Women’s world No 4 Elena Rybakina agrees.

“ These tournaments, which became so long, it’s not very helpful,” she said. “To stay in one place for almost two weeks, and it’s not like here you finish and you go rest. You go and you play another mandatory one. That’s definitely not making it easy.”

During the Madrid Open, Rybakina played compatriot Yulia Putintseva . She found herself down 5-2 and two match points in the third set. She found herself thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to lose.

“You are so tired that at 5-2, you’re just (like), ‘OK, if I’m going to lose, I’m going to have some vacation because the next tournament is coming’,” she said.

She didn’t get the vacation; she rallied to win the set, 7-5.

The next week, Rybakina was the defending champion at the Italian Open.

She pulled out with illness before her first match.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb for The Athletic)

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Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, "The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour," to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @ mattfutterman

2024 Charles Schwab Challenge predictions, expert picks, odds, field rankings, golf best bets at Colonial

O n the heels of a dramatic PGA Championship, the PGA Tour returns to action for the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge. Traveling to Colonial Country Club once again, players will face a new test after the golf course underwent extensive renovations following the 2023 edition of the tournament.

A year ago, Emiliano Grillo defeated Adam Schenk in a playoff with Scottie Scheffler just missing out on extra holes. The world No. 1 headlines the field this year following a hectic week in Louisville. The Dallas-Fort Worth area resident looks to get back to his winning ways at a venue where he has done everything but raise a trophy.

Winning four of his last six events, Scheffler comes to Colonial having finished T3 in 2023 and losing in a playoff to his good friend Sam Burns in 2022. Scheffler is joined in the field by a number of his U.S. Ryder Cup teammates including Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, Max Homa and Brian Harman.

Morikawa continues to make strides towards his former quality as he once again factored in a major championship. A member of the final group in the final round in the first two major championships of the season, the two-time major champ aims to capture his first title of 2024 in Texas.

Speaking of Texas, Spieth will hope a return to his backyard will bring a return of his form. There may be no other venue on the PGA Tour schedule more conducive for the 30-year-old's success as he boasts eight top-10 finishes in 11 appearances including a win in 2016.

Si Woo Kim, Sungjae Im, Min Woo Lee and Tom Kim round out a large international contingent at Colonial with Tony Finau, Denny McCarthy and Chris Kirk also in the mix.

2024 Charles Schwab Challenge schedule

Dates:  May 23-26 |  Location:  Colonial Country Club — Fort Worth, Texas

Par:  70 |  Yardage:  7,289 |  Purse:  $9,100,000

2024 Charles Schwab Challenge field, odds

• Scottie Scheffler (5/2): Outside of Saturday's performance, Scheffler was near flawless at Valhalla with rounds of 67-66-73-65. If he is able to get through last week and still finish inside the top 10, one has to wonder if that truly is his floor. It has been the last nine tournaments as he hasn't finished worse than T10 since the end of January. He's gained strokes putting in six straight events, has a terrific history at this golf course and remains far and away the best player in the world. A fifth win of the season would come to the surprise of no one.
• Collin Morikawa (12-1): Ever since the Masters, Morikawa has started to string together quality starts. He has rattled off five straight top 25s including top fives at the year's first two major championships and another top 10 at the RBC Heritage. The 27-year-old insists he is close to finding the golf swing that led to his early success, but the numbers don't necessarily agree quite yet. Morikawa has enjoyed a fantastic month both on and around the greens with his iron play slowly returning. If the approach play matches the short-game prowess this week, Morikawa should love his chances.
• Jordan Spieth (20-1): If you haven't sounded the alarm on Spieth yet, this week should be the last straw if things get hairy. The three-time major champion has one top 20 in a 10-tournament stretch that includes four missed cuts and a disqualification. Despite some concerns about his game and his wrist, Spieth has started to show that he may be heading in the right direction. He continues to drive the golf ball as well as ever and the early season short-game woes appear to be a thing of the past. The missing link is easy to identify when looking at his stat sheet: his iron play.
• Max Homa (20-1): A win feels close, and it may very well come this week. Homa comes into Texas having finished inside the top 10 in three of his last seven events including two weeks ago at Quail Hollow. He has the entirety of his game cooperating, and a slight uptick from the big stick could yield a big result. After a sluggish start to his career at Colonial, Homa has finished T23 and T9 in his last two appearances. 
• Tony Finau (30-1): Finishing T18 at the PGA Championship may have been the worst Finau could have done with how he hit his irons at Valhalla. The 34-year-old gained just about 10 strokes on approach in Louisville only to be undone by some poor driving and putting numbers. The good news for Finau is he tends to putt well at Colonial, evidenced by his second-place finish in 2019 and T4 result in 2023.
• Harris English (33-1)
• Si Woo Kim (35-1)
• Sungjae Im (35-1)
• Brian Harman (40-1)
• Denny McCarthy (40-1)

2024 Charles Schwab Challenge expert picks

Who will win the Charles Schwab Challenge, and which longshots will stun the golfing world?  Visit SportsLine now to see the projected leaderboard and best bets , all from the model that's nailed 12 golf majors and is up nearly $9,000 since June 2020.

Harry Higgs, Cristobal Del Solar share lead heading into weekend at Visit Knoxville Open

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Things to know

• Harry Higgs and Cristobal Del Solar share the 36-hole lead heading into the weekend at 11-under.
• Twenty-one players sit at T10 or better and within three strokes of the lead.
• The first round was suspended Thursday at 7:38 p.m. ET due to inclement weather. The first round resumed on Friday at 7 a.m. ET and the second round began at 7:50 a.m. ET.
• The 36-hole cut was made at 4-under, with 75 players advancing into the weekend.
• Due to potentially dangerous weather Saturday morning, tee times will run from approximately 10 a.m.-12 p.m. ET with groups going off the first and 10th tee.

First-round lead notes

• Second-round leaders/co-leaders to win the Visit Knoxville Open (7): Anders Albertson (2022), J.J. Spaun (2016), Martin Piller (2014), Hunter Haas (2006), Heath Slocum (2001), Dave Rummells (1997) and Tim Conley (1993)
• Second-round leaders/co-leaders to win on Tour in 2024 (2): Isaiah Salinda (The Panama Championship) and Steven Fisk (Club Car Championship at the Landings Golf & Athletic Club)

Charting the co-leaders

Harry Higgs (co-leader/-11)

• Closed his second round with four consecutive birdies on Nos. 15, 16, 17 and 18 to card a 5-under 65; also made birdies on the par-4 third and 10th against one bogey coming on the par-4 seventh
• Turned in a bogey-free 6-under 64 in the first round
• Won last week’s AdventHealth Championship for his second career Korn Ferry Tour victory (2019 Price Cutter Charity Championship presented by Dr Pepper)
• Made six total starts this season, making three cuts with two top-25 finishes along with his win
• Entered the week No. 7 on the Korn Ferry Tour Points List
• Making his 38th career start on the Korn Ferry Tour this week
• Earned his PGA TOUR card in 2019 by finishing No. 5 on the Korn Ferry Tour Regular Season Points List, entering the 2019-20 season sixth in the final priority ranking
• 118 career starts on the PGA TOUR with six top 10s, including two runner-up finishes (2021 Fortinet Championship, Butterfield Bermuda Championship)
• Owns three career starts in major championships with two top-25 finishes, including a top 10 (T14 at 2022 Masters Tournament; MC at 2022 PGA Championship; T4 at 2021 PGA Championship)
• Played college golf at Southern Methodist University, where he was a member of the team that won the 2014 American Conference Championship and advanced to the quarterfinals at the NCAA Championship
• Turned professional in 2014 following his collegiate career
• Born in New Jersey and grew up in Overland Park, Kansas

Cristobal Del Solar (co-leader/-11)

• Posted a 5-under 65 in the second round with five birdies (Nos. 6, 8, 9, 10, 18) and an eagle (No. 5) against two bogeys (Nos. 3, 7)
• Carded an opening-round, bogey-free 6-under 64 with four birdies and an eagle
• One of two players with multiple eagles through 36 holes (Austin Hitt)
• Finished T10 in his only other start in the Visit Knoxville Open (2023)
• Recorded the lowest 18-hole score in a PGA TOUR-sanctioned event with a 13-under par 57 in the first round of the Astara Golf Championship presented by Mastercard in Bogota, Colombia
• Posted a 27 on the front nine, the lowest nine-hole score in Korn Ferry Tour history
• Second-year member making the 36th start of his Korn Ferry Tour career this week
• Fifth lead or co-lead after any round of his Korn Ferry Tour career, first 36-hole lead of any kind
• Last year as a rookie, finished 52nd on the Points List to earn fully exempt membership for the 2024 Korn Ferry Tour season
• In 25 starts last season, tallied eight top-25 finishes and four top-10s, highlighted by a T5 at the NV5 Invitational presented by Old National Bank
• Turned professional in 2017, playing on PGA TOUR Canada in 2017 and PGA TOUR Latinoamérica from 2018-2022
• Won four times on PGA TOUR Latinoamérica (now PGA TOUR Americas since merging with PGA TOUR Canada) tying him for the second-most career wins in the Tour’s history
• Moved to the United States when he was 15 years old and attended IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida
• Played five seasons at Florida State University from 2012-17, winning once and garnering 2017 All-America Third Team recognition, as well as All-Atlantic Coast Conference laurels in 2016 and 2017
• Plays from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, but was originally born in Vina del Mar, Chile, roughly 76 miles from Santiago, where the Korn Ferry Tour’s Astara Chile Classic presented by Scotiabank will be contested next month

Harry Higgs on the weather delays and completing the first round Friday morning: "Yeah, I'm shocked at how much we did play yesterday. For me, it was only one stoppage. It was a little weird teeing off my first hole, the 10th, and getting to the green and turning around and coming back. After that obviously, it stopped us for darkness. I was shocked at how much we played. It was early this morning, but it was nice to get out I had, what, probably 20 and a half holes roughly I played today. It was warm, though. I definitely found myself getting a little tired the last three or four holes, not quite getting through it like I'd want. Now I've got plenty of time to go back and rest up.”

Higgs on the four things he does before hitting a shot: “I have to have a clear intent about what I want to see happen. I have to have a rehearsal that matches that intent. I have to have a positive thought before I hit the ball. I think it might be three. Yeah, I think it is three. And then the fourth is after, and I have to accept wherever it is. Then I’m trying to do a good job controlling my breathing, especially late in the day when I’m getting a little tired. I have written down, this was started last Sunday, that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Certainly even on Sunday when you have a chance, but there's just so much that can go on, so much golf. Four days and 72 holes is a lot.”

Cristobal Del Solar on keeping his momentum going into the second round: “Yeah, just kept the same strategy as the first round, try to hit good shots, same lines. Honestly, trying hard to focus on my process, just forget about the results and just try to give myself birdie chances. Yeah, just go from there. Hit good shots, do my routine and just – it's coming along really nicely.”

• Four players trail the leaders by one stroke: Max McGreevy (T3/-10), Kris Ventura (T3/-10) and William Mouw (T3/-10) all post 3-under 67s and 7-under 63s over the first two rounds, respectively, while Ryan Gerard (T3/-10) turned in a bogey-free 4-under 66 in the second round
• McGreevy was bogey-free on his round, making birdies on Nos. 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 16 and 18
• Ventura finished T7 in this event last season
• Gerard began his week with a 6-under 64
• Brian Campbell (T7/-9), who entered the week No. 10 on the Points List, makes his Tour-leading 10th cut of the season in his 11th start
• Charles Porter (T7/-9), who carded a bogey-free 8-under 62 in the first round, made his fifth cut of the year in his 10th start after a 2-under 68 in the second round
• After 1-over 71s in the opening round, Trace Crowe (T22/-7) and Dalton Ward (T22/-7) bounced back with the low scores of the tournament with 8-under 62s, marking the lowest 18-hole score of Ward’s career and ties the lowest round of Crowe’s career
• Crowe, making his first Korn Ferry start of the season, earned his PGA TOUR card via a runner-up finish at Final Stage of 2023 PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry, where the top five and ties earned TOUR membership for 2024
• With a solo-third finish at the AdventHealth Championship, Ward earned 190 points to become eligible for Special Temporary Membership for the 2024 Korn Ferry Tour season after surpassing the threshold for Special Temporary Membership of 253.82 points (equivalent to the No. 100 finisher from the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour Points List)
• Tain Lee (T10/-8) posts back-to-back bogey-free 4-under 67s and is the only player in the field bogey-free after 36 holes of competition
• Former Tennessee Volunteer Spencer Cross (T33/-7), who is playing on a sponsor exemption this week, turned in a bogey-free 7-under 63 after a first-round 1-over 71
• Cross finished T10 at the 2023 Visit Knoxville Open
• Holston Hills Country Club member Van Holmgren (T57/-4) posts a 3-under 67 at his home course to make the cut on the number

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2023 Rigs of the Tour Divide Breakdown: Stats Analysis…

By Neil Beltchenko

Associate Editor & YouTube Host

Each year, we publish the Rigs of the Tour Divide, showcasing participants’ bike setups and gear. This time around, 124 folks submitted their kits for our two-part mega gallery. In this post and video, we dive into the stats and share some interesting findings from tire size to drivetrains and from types of seat posts to how many riders used racks. Find it all here…

PUBLISHED Jun 15, 2023

It’s always fun to dig into the rigs of the Tour Divide. I originated the “Rigs of” series in 2014 on Bikepacker.com, and it continues today on BIKEPACKING.com. It’s so exciting to see all of the bikes and equipment used in these events. Some of them look brand new, and others have a little patina, but one thing is certain: each is entirely unique, making this race fascinating year after year. In this video, I unpacked some trends I found while scouring this year’s flat-bar and drop bar-rigs. Watch below and then scroll down for a written version, complete with pie charts to outline the stats.

Types of Bikes

Let’s start with bike type, as that’s how we separated our two “Rigs of” articles. We received 64 flat-bar rigs and 60 drop-bar rigs for the 2023 event. There was a broad sampling of bike brands in the flat-bar and drop-bar categories; among other brands, there were three Cannondales, three Surlys, four Specialized, four Otsos, four Chumbas, and seven Treks. Salsa Cycles again takes the cake with six flat-bar bikes and a whopping 26 drop-bar bikes, totaling 32 bikes or 25% of the field. Cutthroats were by far the most popular bike, with 22 folks riding them, followed by seven Salsa Fargos. If there is one thing that remains the same each year, it’s that the Cutthroat—which was specifically designed for the Tour Divide—is still the most popular bike by leaps and bounds.

The number of riders using suspension was also a pretty interesting metric to look at. Of the 64 flat-bar bikes, over half of them (33) have some sort of suspension fork, whereas only 14 (8%) of the drop-bar bikes had suspension forks. This is no surprise as stock hardtails usually come with suspension forks, whereas drop-bar bikes tend to come with rigid forks. There were also only three complete suspension bikes among this year’s rigs, and perhaps an interesting note: two gravel-specific forks that have very narrow tire clearance.

Tires and Tire Size

Those two bikes and two other rigs had tires at or under 45mm, and two others had 47mm Teravail Rutlands. That’s narrow for a route with a lot of chunky terrain. I should mention one of those bikes is the one shown above left, a classic fixed-gear, rim-brake bike from Adrian Stingaciu, aka Super Vegan, the third-place 2008 finisher and one of the riders in the “Ride the Divide” film that inspired so many of us.

Generally speaking, folks tend to stick to tires over two inches in width, as that extra volume and grip helps with the rough terrain, but it’s clear everyone has their own personal preference. Most of the tires seem to be 2.1, 2.2, and 2.35″ wide, and one thing that stood out was the Vittoria Mezcal party; I’m testing a set right now, and I’m enjoying them, but I had no idea they turned into the tire of choice for the Tour Divide. There are 32 flat-bar bikes running Mezcals and 31 drop-bar bikes with them, making that 63 out of the 124 total rigs using Mezcals; that’s over half the bikes with the same tire pattern, which is pretty wild. There were also 22 bikes with Maxxis tires, with most of them running Maxxis Ikons. But there were also some Mezcal/Ikon combos, which I always love to see. Another popular option was the Fleecer Ridge from Rene Herse; there were 14 of them in the roundup. Then there was a smattering of Teravail, WTB, Continental, and other brands. All but 11 of the bikes were 29″, and the rest were 27.5”. And there were only two bikes with 29 x 3.0 plus tires; even 2.6″ tires weren’t very common, with only three folks running them from what we can see in this year’s rigs.

Drivetrains

While not everyone stated their gearing, let’s get into some essential findings. Most of the bikes have a derailleur. In fact, every drop-bar bike was rocking a derailleur and gears. As for the flat bar bikes, there was more variation, with one Pinion gearbox, two Rohloff Speed Hubs, eight badass singlespeeders, and Adrien’s fixed-geared bike. Another notable finding was that 51 of the drop-bar bikes were 1x, with only 10 2x drivetrains and one 3x drivetrain in the mix. When I raced the Tour Divide a while back, I did it with a 34t chainring and an 11-42t cassette—this was before 12-speed drivetrains. The climbing gear was fine, but I was looking for more top-end speed, and if I were to race again, I would probably run a 2x variation with a 46-tooth chainring up front to accomplish that.

A few other interesting notes on drivetrains: I counted 33 folks who were using SRAM AXS wireless drivetrains, two of which were the new transmission. And to my surprise, I saw zero Di2 drivetrains, which is a shocker considering the limited battery life of one SRAM AXS battery vs. a Di2 battery. For what it’s worth, Mike Hall set the Tour Divide record on a Di2 drivetrain in 2016.

Overall, SRAM was by far the most popular brand of drivetrain with 77 folks using Eagle or another SRAM variation. Behind that, 34 rigs had Shimano groups, and one was using a Sensah derailleur among the group. One other bike had an Shimano rear derailleur and a Campy front. Either way, it’s wild to see that SRAM has become so popular, even though Shimano GRX was designed for gravel and dirt roads.

Aero bars, Racks, Bags, and Seat Posts

Aero bars are another popular talking point. Of the drop-bar bikes, 54 used an aero bar or arm rests attached to the handlebar. There were an additional 51 aero bars on flat-bar bikes. That makes roughly 85 percent of riders using aero bars. And when we talk about aero bars for an event like this, it’s not really to be aero, although it can help in times of high winds. It simply creates another riding position, and from my experience, it’s really enjoyable to get off your hands and put your weight on your forearms from time to time. I would certainly go this route again.

Bags are always an exciting part of these roundups too, and I love to see how many bikes have no true allegiance to one bag manufacturer. Out of the 124 bikes that were in our two “Rigs of” articles, only 13 stuck to one brand. And roughly half of those folks were sponsored by bike brands or had a relationship with the brand.

Thirty-nine of the rigs in the bunch were rocking some sort of rack, with 27 of them being a Tailfin Aeropack. There were also racks from Tumbleweed, Old Man Mountain, and other brands. Of the folks using racks, only six of them were also using dropper posts, which is the primary reason I tend to use a rack these days. Seven additional riders were using dropper posts with seat packs, making the total number of folks using dropper posts 13, which is pretty slim. It’s also worth mentioning that only two drop-bar bikes had a dropper. That said, there were a bunch of suspension posts out there: 21 total, with 13 Cane Creek Thudbuster os eeSilk posts and eight Redshift posts.

Finally, let’s talk about the people who make this event so incredible. Back in 2008, 17 individuals started, and only eight finished. This year, more than 280 folks signed up to race, including 27 women, and as I mentioned, there were 124 who participated in these “Rigs of” articles. Of those participants, there are folks from all over the world, but the top five countries are as follows: three individuals each from France, England, Germany, and Belgium; five from Australia; eight from New Zealand; 21 from Canada; and 72 from the United States. Most of these folks are from Colorado (10), California (7), Minnesota (6), Wisconsin (4), and Oregon (4). It’s cool to see the Midwest representing.

And the best part of this is the age spread: the top age group for parts one and two of The Rigs of the Tour Divide was the 30s, with 36 people participating in that age range. That was followed by folks in their 40s, with 29 riders representing. Participants in their 50s were next with 23 folks, then the 60s with 21, followed by the 20s at 15, and just one 18-year-old. Next time you tell yourself you are too old to ride the Divide, look at these numbers—it’s pretty great to see that there are folks out pushing themselves at all ages.

We’d love to hear from you all about what statistics or variables stand out most to you or what you’d like to see next time. Let us know in the conversation below.

Further Reading

Make sure to dig into these related articles for more info...

Rigs of the 2023 Tour Divide (Part 1): Drop-Bar Bikes

Rigs of the 2023 Tour Divide (Part 2): Flat-Bar Bikes

John and Mira and Their Pinion-Powered Titanium Midtail

Tour Divide Bike Checks: Chris Burkard and Justinas Leveika

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