Durango’s Payson McElveen has won two consecutive USA Cycling marathon mountain biking national championships. For the second consecutive year, he will skip the world championships.
Instead, McElveen will target some domestic events and projects with his Red Bull sponsor. That helped open the door for one of McElveen’s former Fort Lewis College teammates and current Orange Seal Off-Road teammate Ryan Standish to earn selection to the 2018 International Cycling Union (UCI) Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships. Standish will compete along with Durango’s Howard Grotts and California’s Alex Wild in the men’s race.
Young phenom Kate Courtney of California was the lone woman named to the roster for the event which will be held Sept. 15 at Tri Cime Dolomiti Auronzo Di Cadore, Italy.
“We are fielding a strong team for the marathon world championships, highlighted by our two highest ranked cross-country riders in Howard Grotts and Kate Courtney,” said Marc Gullickson, performance director of USA Cycling’s Mountain Bike Program, in a news release.
Grotts, the 2016 Olympian and four-time defending cross-country mountain bike national champion, has finished runner-up in a sprint finish to McElveen at the last two marathon national championship races. Those races are 50 miles. Last year, Grotts finished 27th and was the lone American man to compete at the world championships. He finished 7 minutes, 22 seconds behind the winning time of Alban Lakata of Austria. Lakata won in 3 hours, 17 minutes, 24 seconds.
At this year’s Leadville Trail 100 MTB event, the 25-year-old Grotts beat Lakata by 9:48. It was Grotts’ second consecutive Leadville 100 win. Lakata, 39, is a three-time Leadville 100 winner and three-time marathon mountain bike world champion.
The United States has have never won a medal at the marathon world championships in either the men’s or women’s races. Courtney will try to end that drought on the women’s side this year. Amy Beisel, another Orange Seal Off-Road Team rider, won the women’s national championship this year, but a broken collarbone suffered during the Breck Epic will keep her out of the world championships.
Standish is originally from Australia and competed at Fort Lewis College. He now resides in Aurora. The 25-year-old won the Mongolia Bike Challenge last week, a six-stage race with more than 24 hours of racing. Standish won in 24:20:32.8, which was 2:29.6 ahead of Elijus Civilis of Lithuania. Standish has had a strong season. He was 14th at the cross-country mountain bike national championships and had top-10 finishes at the USA Cycling Pro XCT stops at Solider Hollow, Utah, and Missoula, Montana.
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
