You've never heard of the most brutal race in the world.
The ninth iteration of the premier ultra-endurance cycling race is currently underway.
From Gerrardsbergen, Belguim, to Thessaloniki, Greece, 350 self-supported riders make their way 4000km across Europe. They take only what they can carry and use only what they can find or buy along the way. The clock never stops, and there is only one stage.
This is the Transcontinental.
First held in 2013, the Transcontinental is the creation of the late ultra-distance cyclist Mike Hall.
In its first iteration, the winner, Kristof Allegaert took 7 days, 13 hours and 45 minutes. Second place finished a day later, and third a day later again. The last finisher took 17 days to complete the race.
This is the time scale on which this race is run. Times in days, not hours or minutes.
The Transcontinental harkens back to the first days of cycling races, before the Tour de France was thousands of riders belting down roads in a massive peleton, breakaways racing to steal the stage, support cars and entire teams following the event as it moves from disconnected stage to disconnected stage.
It evokes the spirit of the 1891 Paris-Brest-Paris race which first inspired the Tour de France, and the earliest iterations of the Tour itself. It envisions creating great stories such as Eugène Christophe welding his broken fork back together in the 1913 Tour. (He was penalised three minutes for letting a seven year-old boy pump the forge bellows for him.)
Although the Transcontinental is not as stringent as to require all repairs be performed by the riders themselves, they must be publicly available to all riders. No borrowing a friend’s tools on the way, or stopping off at their house to pick up an extra tube. Stopping in at a bike shop along the route is perfectly acceptable, and there are no penalties for bellows pumping.
This year, the competitors are riding from Belgium to Greece, via a set of four control points, which they must pass through in order:
Passo Della Spluga, Italy
Zgornje Jezersko, Slovenia
Peshkopi, Albania
Meteora, Greece
Other than that and ten simple rules, the riders decide all other aspects of the race themselves. Their route, their food, accomodation, when, where and how much they will sleep, how many spare tyres they will carry, what tools. There are no support vehicles or teams allowed. No car following with sleeping gear, spare tyres, cables or lube. No one to drive up with water or food.
The riders carry and buy their food along the way, or rely on the kindness of strangers. It doesn’t always pan out. Sometimes they are just too far from a bike shop to purchase a much needed part, and their macgyvered solution won’t last long enough to climb the mountain range to get there.
It’s a part of the race the competitors are all too aware of. Each of them know that they are not just racing against the clock, but also their own endurance and their bicycle’s maintenance. Each day multiple competitors pull out of the race, tightening the competition just a little more. This year, thirty-three riders have already pulled out, nearly 10% of the field in only four days, a number that is sure to rise with each successive day. The number of scratches, reported daily, increased from 3 to 6 to 9 to 15 on day four.
As I write this, first place is held by Christoph Strasser, currently making his way up Parcours 3, the third mandatory segment, just past CP3 (Control Point 3) in Peshkopi, Albania. Robin Gemperle the current second place is around 200 kilometres behind him, less than 100kms from Peshkopi. In a race like this, that might as well be a few seconds difference.
The race runs on still, viewable through the live tracking on the website, so check it out, and if you like it you might just become one of the “dot watchers”.
Links:
https://linktr.ee/LostDot
https://ridefar.info/races/history-bikepacking-races/
https://www.transcontinental.cc/
https://dotwatcher.cc/