It’s tempting to count out Ned Overend. The guy’s 58 years old after all, and his focus these days is really more on product development than racing.
But the Durango mountain-biking legend has struck again.
This time it was at Saturday’s inaugural U.S. National Fat Bike Championship in Cable, Wis. Overend won the men’s division, topping the nearest competitor in the 291-man field – 24-year-old Will Ross of Anchorage, Alaska – by 2 minutes.
Fat-bike racing is done on really fat tires (3.7 inches or wider) on snow. This race was 47 kilometers, and it took Overend 1 hour, 52 minutes.
The second-oldest, top-20 finisher was none other than Durangoan Travis Brown. The 44-year-old, who won the Colorado Fatbike Championship on Jan. 25 in Como, suffered a tire leak and finished 13th.
Neither Overend, who won the inaugural World Mountain Bike Championship cross country race in 1990, nor Brown, a former Olympian, races for a living any more. Both work in product development – Overend for Specialized and Brown for Trek. But let’s just say they both still ride a lot.
herald staff
