Matthew Lee rolled into Antelope Wells, New Mexico, early Tuesday morning under the cover of darkness to win the 2010 Tour Divide mountain bike race.
Lee finished the both breath-taking and grueling race down the spine of the Continental Divide in 17 days, 16 hours and 13 minutes. It was his sixth victory.
Winning this year meant that Lee overcame the weather, the theft of his bicycle, a mid-route course change due to a forest fire, and the tragic loss of fellow Tour Divide cyclist David Blumenthal.
Organizer
At 39, Lee is a year older than Lance Armstrong. Making his home in Carrboro, North Carolina, Lee also organizes the race. He averaged about 158 miles a day over dirt track and gravel road that claims more than 200,000 feet of elevation gain.
His location, and that of all 48 mountain bikers who set out from Banff, Ontario, on June 11, was tracked online by SPOT Casting, which used a satellite hook-up. According to that, Erik Lobeck of Steamboat Springs will be the next cyclist to show up at the finish line.
Among the other cyclists, Aidan Harding of London is slightly ahead of Forest Baker of Sunnyvale, California. About eight other riders are in the vicinity of the New Mexico-Colorado border.
Mountain turtle
So far, more than 20 mountain bikers have had to drop out.
One of those is Kent Peterson of Issaquah, who suffered a mechanical failure on this singlespeed that required him to variously push or coast his bicycle over 40 miles. You can read about it at “End of a Turtle's Trail.”
Although we're all sorry Kent, who calls himself the Mountain Turtle, his early return home means that he's posted some fabulous photos that he took along the route at his website, Kent's Bike blog.
A couple of other cyclists from Washington also have dropped out. They are Eric Bruntjen of Roslyn and Brett Foster of Kirkland. Still in the race are Dave Preston and Derek Richert of Seattle and Mike Prochaska of North Bend. Best of luck to them. (See the complete roster here.)
Bicycle theft
One of the oddest stories to come out of Tour Divide this year is the theft of Lee's bicycle. Apparently he was fueling up at a McDonald's in Grants, New Mexico. He saw a brazen individual check out his bike, look directly at him, then take off on it.
Lee chased him on foot but couldn't keep up. Fortunately, he left his SPOT Casting device on his bike and was able to track it down and recover it that way.
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