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Dirt-road Touring
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We have a new Tour Divide course record! Congratulations to Justinas Leveika of Lithuania, who just pedaled into Antelope Wells, New Mexico, becoming the first rider to finish the 2024 Tour Divide. In doing so, he made history and broke the overall course record held for eight years by the late great Mike Hall. Get the exclusive scoop and find a collection of photos from the finish here…
Photos by Eddie Clark
At 9:25 a.m. on Thursday, June 27, 2024, Lithuanian ultra-endurance racer Justinas Leveika reached Antelope Wells, New Mexico, to set a new record on the 2,700-mile Tour Divide route with a time of 13 days, 2 hours, and 16 minutes (13:02:16), winning the race over the chasing Ulrich Bartholmoes, a role reversal from the 2023 race where Bartholmoes took the top honors over Leveika.
Since 2016, fans of Tour Divide have watched the late Mike Hall’s record dot blaze a path in front of every year’s racers, ever consistent and unrelenting. After eight years of the Mike’s record time of 13 days, 22 hours, 51 minutes being out of reach for everyone, someone has finally bested the time. At the beginning of this year’s race, with Bartholmoes and Leveika returning—who’d both challenged for the record last go around—it seemed that barring course reroutes or atrocious conditions, someone was going to set a new Tour Divide record. It was just a question of whom and by how much.
Leveika’s time shaved 20 hours off the old standard, a feat made even more impressive by the addition of several singletrack sections throughout New Mexico that most certainly added time and fairly horrendous weather throughout the northern half of Montana, where riders were pelted with rain and snow for multiple days on end.
For all practical purposes, Leveika led the race from start to finish, consistently in front of record pace for most of the event. He gave a master class on finding the perfect balance between minimal sleep and fast pedaling to best his 2023 time of 14 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes by over a day and a half.
Leveika made several all-night pushes over the course of the route to reach certain destinations before stopping, including a big push to Flagg Ranch in Wyoming and another to get to Brush Mountain Lodge in Colorado. He consistently slept less than his competitors while keeping a similar average moving pace of 8.6 miles per hour.
Leveika maintained a fairly steady gap over the ever-persistent Bartholmoes for most of the race, but it seemed as if things would come back together in New Mexico for a sprint to the finish. The two briefly saw each other at the lodge in Platoro right before the New Mexico border, with Bartholmoes arriving just as Leveika was leaving at 10 p.m. The gap again closed to within five miles between the two men just north of Cuba when tire issues ultimately took Bartholmoes out of the hunt for the win.
With nearly every type of weather imaginable, from snowstorms in Montana to searing heat in New Mexico, Leveika showed remarkable durability in all types of weather and over all types of terrain. Congratulations on an amazing ride and a new record, Justinas!
Check out the 2024 Tour Divide Tracker page to follow along on the live tracking map, find our Rigs of the Tour Divide roundups, and stay tuned in for more event coverage. Find it here.
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