Van der Linden secures decisive Epic win with final stage victory
The Boulder racer says having fun buoyed her through the week
By Shauna Farnell
Not many Epic racers get stronger and faster stage by stage, but that’s how things went for Leah Van der Linden (Lauf/Continental/Hunt/Ellei/Tifosi). The 31-year-old from Boulder swept Stages 2-6 to become the resounding 2025 Breck Epic champion.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Van der Linden said Friday, after she was once again the first woman to cross the finish line in the final stage of the Breck Epic, a 31-mile, quick-paced out-and-back spin over Boreas Pass with 3,740 feet of climbing.
“I just wanted to hammer it today on both the climbs,” she said. “I knew Lauren was going to put some time on me on the climbs if I didn’t climb harder.”
Considering downhill her strong suit, Van der Linden came into her first Breck Epic on the heels of the Leadville 100 on Saturday. Having never done a mountain bike stage race, she finished Stage 1 a close second to Lauren Stephens (Aegis Cycling Foundation).
With something to prove on the trails she rides so often with a home away from home in Dillon, Van der Linden fired to the first major win of her mountain biking career in the Epic’s Stage 2 on the Colorado Trail. From that point on, she was the woman to beat.
“I’m just really happy with how today went and the rest of the week,” she said, adding that she was the one to set the pace Friday, even though the course started with a 1,500-foot climb. “I didn’t want anyone in front of me and I just wanted to race my race. I actually PR’d on the top of Boreas. Coming down Gold Dust, oh my God, that’s one of my favorite trails. It was just downhill home, full throttle. That was the goal today.
Fifth straight Stage win
Van der Linden crossed the line for her fifth straight Stage win with a time of 2 hours, 30 minutes and 8 seconds. Stella Hobbs (MAAP/Zwift/Wahoo), Van Der Linden’s riding buddy for part of the course came through next in 2:32:11 and Stephens rounded out the Stage 6 podium in 2:33:53.
With the five stage wins, Van der Linden handily claimed the Epic overall victory with a total time of 22:02:13. Stephens was runner-up in 22:20:24 and Julie Momber, a nurse in Prescott, Ariz., who works the night shift at a hospital and, racing in her second Epic, was hoping only to finish top 10, landed on the overall podium with a time of 22:53:55.
After a harrowing few days beginning with having her third-place finish at the Leadville 100 revoked due to a misunderstanding on where she could do a water bottle handoff and followed by a series of crashes, Stephens considered dropping out of the Epic. She’s glad she didn’t.
Sold on stage racing
“Like I said early on, this is a race I’ve always wanted to do,” said Stephens, whose husband Mat swept all but Stage 5 of his 40-plus Men category and encouraged her to try the Epic. “I felt like it was a little out of my league. So, I’m just happy that I gave it a chance and hope to come back. I love to ride mountain bike, and racing is just another level. This is just such a fun event. No matter how you’re doing, you’re gonna have fun at this race.”
Both Stephens and Van der Linden will go on to race in the upcoming World Gravel Championships in Lincoln, Neb. Van der Linden also plans to be back in the Breck Epic, and is hooked on stage racing now.
“This week kind of opened my eyes a little bit to how there’s so much more out there than just gravel or just road,” Van der Linden said. “I want to do other mountain bike stage races because it’s freaking awesome. I think I raced so well this week because I was having so much fun.”
The 2025 Breck ePike is in the books; Kerkove gets FKT on Mega
Pellaud nabs final stage win as Pike cruises to GC victory
By Shauna Farnell
Van der Linden. Always smiling.
Image: Eddie Clark
The 2025 Epic ended in a blaze of glory for many riders and a blur of Lycra for others, but among the Men’s Pro field, there was one clear champion, Matt Pike.
In Friday’s final stage, however, everyone came out to hammer. Starved for redemption after a few days riddled by mechanicals, Swiss rider Simon Pellaud (Tudor Pro Cycling) set a pace with which nobody even tried to hang. He won Stage 6 in 2 hours, 3 minutes and 17 seconds. It was almost 7 minutes faster than his closest competitor – Cassius Anderson (Marin Service Course/Castelli/Enve)– who, along with Macky Franklin (#BeMoreAwesome) – comprised the first of the Lycra blurs to cross the line. Both sprinting wildly, Anderson got a one second edge to take second in the stage with a time of 2:10:12 as Mackey took third in 2:10:13. Ripping through close in their wake came Cory Wallace (Kona Bikes) and Lance Haidet (Specialized/SRAM/Velocio/Fat tire, crossing the line simultaneously in 2:10:30. In so doing, Wallace held onto his seven-second GC lead to take second overall as Haidet rounded out the Epic podium.
Swiss jets
Pellaud bided his strike until after the first singletrack climb up Aspen Alley, hitting Boreas Pass road with his jets firing.
“When I felt that I had the legs to go, I just went,” said the 32-year-old Swissman who came into his first Epic after a second-place finish in Saturday’s Leadville 100. “It was a super fast stage. I could take very little risk in the downhill because I knew I had a big gap. Then I switched to TT mode. I felt good power in the legs and enjoyed the day.”
Nobody saw Pellaud after that and he didn’t see anyone other than wildlife and Epic riders heading up the climb.
“I only saw some squirrels and some people on the way out,” he said. “It was cool to see how many people were enjoying the event and having fun out there. It’s been a great week.”
Pellaud fell out of GC contention in Stage 4 when his brakes (on his bike that finally showed up after being stuck in customs for several days) failed and he didn’t complete the stage. He led Stage 5 only to succumb to a flat tire in the descent and was determined to win before the Epic wrapped up.
“I was not fully competitive every day, it was more of a learning process, but I’m super happy about how the week went,” Pellaud said, offering a shoutout to the Epic volunteers who housed him for the week. “Thanks to Josh and JoAnne, they were working their ass off all week, leaving before I even wake up and coming home at night. It’s about much more than only racing. For me, being here, traveling the world, I really like meeting new people, new cultures and taking the best out of it.”
Dueling it out
Wallace and Haidet made the best of it, too, dueling fiercely throughout the final stage.
“I had seven seconds on Lance, so all I had to do was stay with him today,” Wallace said. “I knew that wasn’t gonna be easy. Lance descends so fast and the last 5 miles are descending. All day we marked each other. We did a few attacks, but we couldn’t lose each other. It was a good battle, a tough finish.” The final Stage of the ePike Then there was Pike. The 28-year-old Longmont rider didn’t have it in him to chase down Pellaud and decided to give space to the crew battling for podium spots. He pedaled across the line 2 seconds behind Wallace and Haidet. With a total time of 18:07:12, more than 18 minutes ahead of those two, the 2025 Breck Epic is his.
“Simon took off like 15 minutes in, and he was gone. It took a little while for the body to wake up this morning. Popping out of Bakers Tank onto the road, I started to wake up a little bit. Ripped down Gold Dust with Josh Tostado. That was a blast, hooting and hollering the whole way down. Up the backside, I saw four guys coming up. Cassius and Macky lit it up towards the end and caught me. I did my best to drag them to the singletrack, but they wanted to jump me into it. Cory and Lance were marking each other there. I let them battle it out.”
At the top of Boreas Pass, Pike ended up having a beer by himself, but at least he chugged it in style.
“I got there alone and I left alone,” he said of the PBR aid station. “I asked for an unopened can and sat there for a little bit, shot gunned it, then took off. They [Wallace and Haidet] were right there, of course. I just cruised it in.”
As for where this Breck Epic victory stands in the history of his two-wheel endeavors …
“I don’t win too much, so it’s certainly the top of the list,” Pike says. “I really enjoy this race. I keep coming back. I wanted it to be competitive, and it was. It was super fun really racing this thing every day. I had a blast. Glad to seal it off with a fun day.”
Next up? Pike is going to make his second attempt at an FKT on the Colorado Trail.
In the meantime, keep an eye out for Breck ePike T-shirts and merch…
Jeff Kerkove sets FKT on Mega Epic
Hey Epic riders, you thought that was hard? Jeff Kerkove did all six stages all at once – 218.70 miles, 31,532 feet of climbing – in 34 hours, 39 minutes and 9 seconds.
After completing the Breck Epic seven or eight times, The Buena Vista rider tackled the Mega, which he says “was partially my good/bad idea” and set the official record, doing the whole damn thing unsupported.
“I carried all of my food from the start. I wasn’t technically able to resupply until I came into Breck to go over Wheeler. All my water I filtered out of creeks. I didn’t use the aid stations. I just did it how I’m used to doing it,” Kerkove said, sitting on the pavement to watch the action-packed proceedings at the Epic’s finish line Friday.
No stranger to this sort of thing, Kerkove has bikepacked everywhere from the Colorado Trail to Kyrgyzstan. His resupply consisted mostly of liquids – Naked juice, chocolate milk and Coca-Cola.
“I did the last two stages – Wheeler and Boreas – on nothing but Coca-Cola. You get to the point that eating doesn’t taste good. You just want something you can get down. Coca-Cola does the trick,” he said.
He also managed to squeeze in a power nap.
“On the back side of French Pass, halfway through Stage 3, my stomach was going south, my legs didn’t feel that great,” he said. “Usually if you sleep anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, you can reset the system. I laid down just off of Georgia Pass Road and slept for 45 minutes. It was about 9 p.m., right before it got cold. I had a down jacket and space blanket. That was enough to kind of sleep well, reset and get going again.”
Highlights? “The sunset on French Pass. I could think of worse places to be at that time of day. Also … “sharing the wheeler stage with everybody else. I was up there the same time they were.”
Why do it? It’s the reward of something hard. You do something like this, 3 days, 6 days, Mega, it’s good to have a goal, set a goal, work your ass off to get it, go out and accomplish it. Every time you do something hard, it resets your limit. Also, the Mega is a very accessible entry into ultra racing or bikepacking. It’s not like the Colorado Trail race or Tour of the Divide where you’re two days to civilization. Here, you go 30 miles out and decide you don’t want to do it, you pedal back to town. No harm, no foul. It will be cool to watch it grow.”
