Tour Divide epic race wraps up with two locals in top three

Branham in second, Passant in third

After 2,693 miles (or 4,334 kilometers for all you Euros out there), the annual Tour Divide Mountain Bike Race has started to wrap up with the top finishers hammering down to the final finish line at the U.S./Mexico border near Antelope Wells, N.M.
Two racers from the Gunnison Valley are among those top contenders, nailing down top-three finishes in their inaugural Tour Divide races. Jefe Branham of Gunnison placed second, just 4 hours and 9 minutes behind Tour Divide winner Kurt Refsnider of Boulder. Ethan Passant came in third, at 34 hours and 6 minutes back from the leader.
The Tour Divide started on June 10 in Banff, Alberta with a scheduled Grand Depart for all contenders wishing to take part in this annual race of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, which primarily follows dirt roads and jeep trails parallel to the Continental Divide. Racers are entirely self-supported for the duration of the event, using only commonly available resupply resources such as grocery stores and bike shops along the route for whatever supplies and repairs they might need along the way.
Timing for the event is provided using SPOT Trackers, a GPS-linked receiver that automatically transmits a racer’s position to event organizers via a website designed specifically for epic multi-day races such as this. That website can be found at www.trackleaders.com.
This year’s event was different from those in the past due to the epic amounts of snow that fell all across the Continental Divide this past winter, rendering many parts of the route completely impassable. This year’s course was 52 miles shorter than the typically 2,745 mile race. As such, there will be no “official” finishers this year to contend with timed records from past races, as the course followed a significantly different route, as was the case last year when the race was forced to detour around a large wildfire.
Nonetheless, this year’s top finisher, Kurt Refsnider, completed the abridged 2,693-mile route in 15 days, 21 hours, and 6 minutes. Refsnider, a past contender in the Tour Divide, had previously held the second fastest time for the traditional route with a time in 2009 of 18 days, 11 hours, and 13 minutes, with perennial Tour Divide powerhouse Matthew Lee ahead of him with a time of 17 days, 23 hours, and 45 minutes.
Branham’s overall time this year was 16 days, 1 hour, and 21 minutes with Passant crossing the line at 17 days, 8 hours, and 30 minutes.
Passant, who rides for the local Alpine Orthopaedics bike team, went into this year’s race with “no expectations.” Though he is no stranger to long-distance unsupported mountain bike racing, having done all the Colorado Trail Races and currently the CTR defending champion, Passant didn’t quite expect the enormous toll the Tour Divide would exact on him. A typical day consisted of waking up at 6 a.m., wolfing down a Pop-Tart for breakfast and then starting the day’s pedal, all the while trying to consume between 5,000 and 6,000 calories of what Passant calls “robot food”—electrolyte Gu packets, ClifBars, and ShotBloks.
He would typically wrap up the day around midnight or 2 a.m. for a few hours sleep. Amazingly, over the course of nearly 2,700 miles, he only had one mechanical problem—a broken spoke on the non-drive side of his rear wheel, which he said took him about four minutes to deal with and then it was back to mashing the pedals and burying the miles. When asked if he would go back and race the Tour Divide again, Passant replied emphatically “once was enough.”