Fresh off a successful World Cup season, Durango’s Christopher Blevins is stateside and showed off his speed and skill against some different competition.
Blevins competed in the 2024 Life Time Little Sugar Mountain Bike 100-kilometer race on Sunday in Bentonville, Arkansas. After 100 kilometers of singletrack racing, the top three of Blevins, Matt Beers and Keegan Swenson had a sprint finish that Blevins barely came out victorious.
“It was just an all-day battle with Matt Beers and Keegan Swenson, who are two of the guys I love racing with the most,” Blevins wrote on Instagram. “We'll see if I've got the steam to race Big Sugar Gravel next weekend, but happy to finish the season with this one!”
Blevins finished the 100-kilometer race in 4 hours, 13 minutes and 24 seconds. Beers came in second with the same time and Swenson was in third.
Swenson has dominated the Life Time Grand Prix gravel series this year and Beers has also focused on that series. Therefore, Blevins hasn’t had a ton of opportunities to race those guys this year since he’s been over in Europe racing on the UCI MTB World Cup series.
Durango’s Cody Cupp was ninth in the men’s race, finishing in 4:24:28. Riley Amos was behind him in 21st, finishing in 4:38:11. Keiran Eagen finished 29th in 4:52:51.
“My only goal for the day was to keep it steady and just ride hard from start to finish,” Cupp wrote on Instagram. “Seems like riding your own pace is a pretty good strategy on these relentlessly twisty trails as I managed to go forwards through the field all day and most of the dudes I caught in the second half of the race were properly shelled. (Russell Finsterwald) and I ripped the last 40ish miles together and reaped some serious victims out there. I kept air in the tires and felt like I was riding my bike well, overall a good day of flying through the woods of northwest Arkansas.”
Local rider Sofia Waite was on the podium of the elite women’s race. She finished third in 4:56:58. Sofia Gomez Villafane won the elite women’s race in 4:52:51. Fort Lewis College senior Michaela Thompson finished sixth in 5:03:10. Durango’s Bailey Cioppa finished 13th in 5:16:12.
Thompson wrote on Instagram that she felt great to line up against such a great field of women and race well.
Many Durango riders will compete in the Big Sugar Gravel race in Bentonville on Saturday as part of the Life Time Grand Prix’s final race of the 2024 season.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
