The Iron Horse Bicycle Classic is synonymous with Durango for thousands of local cyclists and those from out of town. For many, it's a yearly challenge and a peak achievement. For a small percentage of riders, the 50-mile mountainous jaunt to Silverton is still challenging, but it isn’t much to shake a fist at. After all, the front of the field are professional cyclists.
With a legacy of more than 50 years, the Iron Horse has attracted a diverse cast of characters to the Durango-Silverton road race year in and year out. Below are a few of the winners from years past and present and what they are up to now.
George Mount (1975) – Mount, aka “Smilin George” was the first cyclist for Team USA to ride to a top-10 result in the 1976 Olympics. After his cycling career, he went into the business world, becoming an “Engineering Program Manager with significant Marketing and Engineering Product Management experience.” He also sits on the board of directors for the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame.
Ned Overend (1983) – Overend is a familiar name to those in Durango and in the broader cycling community and took his first of many Iron Horse wins in 1983. Since stepping back from professional racing, though he still races and gives current pros a run for their money, Overend has stayed busy working with longtime sponsor Specialized Bicycles on product development and as an adviser to development team Segment 28.
Burke Swindelhurst (1995) – In 2011, Swindlehurst founded Crushar in the Tushar, a 70-mile race through Beaver, Utah’s Tushar Mountains that gains more than 10,000 feet of elevation along the way.
Jonathan Vaughters (1996) – Vaughters rode the 1999 Tour de France on the same team as then-winner Lance Armstrong. He retired from professional cycling at the end of 2003 and formally admitted to using performance enhancing drugs in 2012. Today he is the CEO of the EF Education – EasyPost pro cycling team.
Sepp Kuss (2017) – When Kuss won the Iron Horse, he was just at the beginning of his sharp rise into the professional road racing ranks. He would go on to win a stage of the Tour de France in 2021. In 2023, he won the Vuelta a Espana, prompting a huge parade and celebration in downtown Durango. This season he is expected to race the Tour de France once again for team Visma-Lease a Bike
Howard Grotts (2018) – A 2016 Olympian, Grotts took a step back from international racing to complete a master’s degree in mathematics. In recent years, he has returned to the top level of the sport, competing in the Life Time Grand Prix, a series that combines marathon mountain bike races with the recently developed discipline of gravel racing,
Griffin Easter (2019) – Easter has also stepped into the world of gravel cycling and is a regular at the pointy end of races. He runs the OpiCure Foundation, an organization that uses cycling to strive “to END the cycle of human suffering from opioid misuse and addiction.”
Riley Amos (2021) – Amos races for the Trek Factory Racing mountain bike team. This year, he went undefeated in the Under-23 races at the first two rounds of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series, qualifying himself for the Olympic Games. He will skip this year’s IHBC, rather racing this weekend at the World Cup in Nové Město na Moravě in the Czech Republic.
Quinn Simmons (2022) – Simmons won a stage of the Vuelta a San Juan last year, the first major pro victory of his career, before taking the USA road race national championships the same year. This year, he crashed out of Italy’s Strade Bianche and has not raced since.
Caleb Classen (2023) – Classen races for the Project Echelon team. Earlier this year he completed a series of races in Spain before illness derailed the rest of his spring campaign.
Louella Holter (1979) – Holter won the Iron Horse the first year the women’s category raced all the way to Silverton (previously the women’s course was shorter). A cycling and Nordic skiing national champion, Holter published the book “Bikes, Dreams, and the Inner Life” in 2009.
Ruthie Matthes (1990) – Matthes still lives in Durango and is an active cyclist and skier. She works for cycling brand Magura, has served as a brand ambassador for numerous brands in the industry, and has an interest in herbalism and botany.
Juliana Furtado (1991) – Furtado is an Olympian, five-time national champion and three-time World Cup overall winner. In 2013, Furtado helped launch Juliana Bicycles, a sub-brand of Santa Cruz Bicycles designed specifically for women riders. In recent years she opened up in the media about overcoming her struggles with depression.
Mary Grigson (2000) – Grigson (now Daubert) placed 6th in the Sydney Olympics, racing in her home country and was inducted into the Cycling Australia Hall of Fame in 2016.
Mara Abbott (2007) – Abbott won the 2007 race and went on to win five additional times. She is the Chief of Staff at OpenMinds, “a coalition of 120+ of the world’s energy and climate experts working to derive and enact optimal solutions” to climate change.
Mindy Caruso (2012)- Caruso also won in 2017. Today she works as a nurse and is still a competitive cyclist and is active in the cycling scene of her hometown of Albuquerque.
Aimee Vasse (2018) – Vasse works as a veterinarian and also competes for the Distance to Empty program, a Colorado-based nonprofit that seeks to bring more women into the gravel cycling race scene.
Sarah Sturm (2019) – Sturm has made a name for herself in the gravel and long-distance mountain bike scene, placing third in the Life Time Grand Prix 2022 and 4th in 2023. She is known for her light and fun personality in a sport that often takes itself too seriously.
Erin Huck (2021) – Boulder-based Huck competed in the 2020 Olympic Games mountain bike race (contested in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic), placing 31st. After having a child in 2022, she is back to racing at the professional level and currently sits seventh overall in the Life Time Grand Prix series.
Kira Payer (2022) – Payer races for the Boneshaker presented by Orange Seal cycling team, recently winning her first-career UCI professional victory during stage 2 of the Vuelta Ciclística Internacional Femenina a Guatemala and placing fifth overall in the race. She also won in 2023.
