I still can't believe that Kurt Refsnider blew away the previous record for the great divide by finishing it in 15 days, 21 hours, and 1 minute. Congrats Kurt!
Though I'm not even sure if this is official yet this is a full 2 days, 5 hours faster then Mathew Lee's seemingly untouchable finish of 17 days, 16 hours, 13 minutes.
To top it all off Jefe Branham came in just behind him at 16 days, 16 minutes while riding it SINGLE SPEED!
A large amount of riders are still coming in. There seems to be no news articles or summaries anywhere that can even remotely capture the excitment and stories and yet the TD race discussion on bikepacking.net is growing so rapidly I can't keep up. It currently stands at some 1,860 comments: http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=2179.new
The tour divide has definitely gotten big this year with some 140 or so riders, but is still getting suprisingly little press which is fine by me. Maybe one day I'll get to ride it before it get's all grown up and the bar is so high one can't even hope to finish in the now much shortened (thanks to Kurt's new record) cut-off time.
Do the huge success this year it will no doubt get much bigger next year.
The best snapshot I have seen capturing the mistique of the ride has been by photog Devon Balet who posted some superb shots of the tour divide including a couple wonderful videos. They start to capture what a wonderful thing the divide is, but beware the second video. In it's own absolutely wonderful and superb way it also captures just how wild and crazy and un summarizeable the event is. This is not an event that has been polished and possibly cannot be polished for mainstream appeal. It's riders and their amazing stories are as varied and wonderful as any come. It's what I love about it.
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