Maybe a man in his 50s winning a national championship against competitors half his age shouldn’t surprise us anymore.
At age 59, Ned Overend just keeps rolling.
The Durango mountain biker notched another first Saturday in Ogden, Utah, winning the inaugural USA Cycling Fat Bike National Championships. USA Cycling did not sanction the first-ever national fat bike championships in Cable, Wisconsin, last year on the famed Birkebeiner cross-country ski course. Yes, Overend won that, too.
The longtime Specialized rider, also representing the Durango Wheel Club, edged 38-year-old Brad Bingham of Steamboat Springs by 32 seconds. Durango’s Travis Brown, 45, was 1:22 behind in third place.
When the unexpected keeps occurring, is it really still so unexpected? Some might have thought he was nearly over the hill when, at age 35, he won the first-ever UCI-sanctioned World Mountain Bike Championships in 1990. He’s added a few more titles since. And Overend said he’d been training hard for the Ogden race, which featured “fat” mountain bikes with tires 3.7 inches wide or wider.
“I’ve been keying on that race once it was announced a few months ago,” Overend said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I’m still motivated. ... I have confidence in my training. I knew I was pretty fit going in.”
So when he zipped across the line first after three loops around the 6.1-mile course on Powder Mountain Resort’s cross country trails, he wasn’t shocked.
“That was my plan. Plan accomplished.”
The 18-man starting field was smallish, but talented. It included Mitch Hoke, a Boulderite who three years ago won the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic mountain bike race. Overend felt Hoke was the race favorite.
By the time the race began at 1 p.m. it was about 50 degrees at the start line at nearly 9,000 feet elevation. So the rolling course was soft in spots and slick in others. The snow conditions, as well as a strong wind, made it a technically and strategically challenging race, Overend and Brown both said.
By the middle of the second lap four riders were contending at the front: Overend, Brown, Bingham and Hoke. Hoke had some difficulties in a soft spot, Overend said, and lost touch at that point.
Brown said Bingham made a break on that second lap, Overend chased him, and Brown tried to stick with Overend.
“He just rode me off his wheel into the headwind,” Brown said of Overend.
Overend said he was able to put some distance on Bingham on the last lap.
“I think Ned was the strongest guy,” said Brown, riding for Trek. “I think I had a pretty good day.”
Overend noted that although he got the best of his fellow Durangoan this time, Brown beat him in October at the Road Apple Rally in Farmington. Brown offered to trade his Road Apple title for the fat bike national title.
“We’ve been battling for 20 years,” Brown said. “Hopefully we have a lot more races like that. It’s fun.”
Also from Durango, Martha Iverson won the 65-plus category, completing two laps in 1:07:55 for K4 Racing. Rich Bagienski, riding for Durango Wheel Club, was fourth in the 65-69 men’s category in 1:06:53.
Amanda Miller of Colorado Springs won the women’s pro race in 1:27:05, 1:32 ahead of second-place Rebecca Rusch of Ketchum, Idaho, a four-time Leadville 100 Trail champion and world-renowned endurance athlete.
johnp@durangoherald.com
