A North American-record of 60+ pro MTB women toed the start line on stage one of Breck Epic 2024. Image: Eddie Clark

The hundreds of riders competing in the 2024 Breck Epic mountain bike race awoke to uncharacteristic hurricane conditions preceding Stage 1 on Sunday.

As a result of the wind and rain, organizers pushed back the race start an hour and cut the Pennsylvania Gulch course by half, protecting the trails and making for a fast-paced, 16.3-mile course up and down singletrack and 4X4 roads, including about 2,400 feet of climbing.

A whopping 52 Pro Elite women – double the size of the pro men’s field – competed in Stage 1, a Breck Epic record and among the highest number of pro women ever to enter any U.S. mountain bike race.

Stella Hobbs, competing in her first Breck Epic, blazed across the finish line first.

The 31-year-old who co-owns and operates a bike shop – Great Northern Cycle & Ski –  in her hometown of Whitefish, Mont., finished the abbreviated Stage 1 course in 1 hour, 31 minutes and 54 seconds.

“It was so fun. I had so much fun,” said Hobbs, who, like the rest of the field, was splattered with mud from head to toe. “This is my favorite kind of riding – tech-y, but with good sight lines. A lot of our high alpine riding is super technical where you’re off your bike a lot. It feels like a gift to be able to keep moving through the technical terrain.”

Although a seasoned mountain biker, Hobbs’ previous top results have come in gravel events. She won the Big Horn Sheep Last Best Ride gravel race, a competition she co-organizes, two weeks ago and took second in last year’s Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder.

She is stoked to be competing for the first time among such a sizable throng of strong female mountain bikers.

“I know these girls just a little bit. I saw their writeups last year. I was like, I should do this. I think I would like this,” Hobbs said. “So often at home, we are all riding with men. They’re our training partners. They’re wonderful. They’re our best friends, but when we go to other places and ride with each other and watch each other’s paces, it’s a total treat, such a joy.”

Stage 1 winner Stella Hobbs sharing a moment with runner-up Kasyee Armstrong. Image: Jace Stout

It was Team Juliana’s Kaysee Armstrong, 34, overall runner-up and Stage 2 and 4 winner in last year’s Epic, who set the pace in Stage 1. She led from the start until Hobbs reeled her on the second climb and managed to keep the lead by just over a minute.

“I was in front for a while by myself,” Armstrong said. “She caught me at that technical uphill. I could see her right there forever. Then we went down that gravel road. I’ve raced her in a gravel race before. She’s so strong on those slide descents with pedaling. I was like, man, if I was smart, I’d be on that wheel, but I’m not.”

Based in Knoxville, Tenn., Armstrong was not at all deterred by the greasy conditions on Sunday and was not relieved when the course was shortened.

“I was like, wow, OK. Now we’re just going to sprint. I’m going to taste blood a little bit,” she said.

Coming back from a broken hand sustained a few weeks ago racing in the BC Bike Race, Armstrong was on the fence about competing in the Epic until FOMO prevailed.

“I was not feeling the most excited for this race. It was like, will I be better? Will my hand feel OK? I don’t know. When 60 women are showing up, I’m like, there’s no way I’m going to miss that. It feels pretty special, for sure,” she said. “I’ve always wanted more women racing, especially at stage races. They’ve always been my favorite.”

Clocking in about three minutes behind Armstrong and four behind Armstrong, Minturn’s Haley Dumke rounded out the women’s Stage 1 podium. Also a newbie to the Breck Epic and relatively fresh to mountain bike racing in general – although she did just notch her first major victory in the Silver Rush 50 in Leadville this summer – Dumke started her race cautiously.

“It was definitely different conditions than I was expecting,” the 31-year-old said. “I wanted to start the race safe and within my limits, so I waited until it opened up a little bit terrain-wise to try to get into it and let it go a little bit. I was covered in mud from the moment we turned off the pavement. It was actually a nice way to get the jitters out. I had no idea where I was in the field until someone told me at like mile 12 and a half. I’m like, oh my God, gotta go fast. Gotta keep this.” 

Former Breck Epic champion Evelyn Dong blazed across the finish line about 36 seconds after Dumke, slathered in an extra layer of mud from an apparent crash. Pro road cyclist Erica Clevenger followed in fifth place and Durango’s Ellen Campbell, who somehow found some strength reserves to race following her sixth place finish in the Leadville 100 on Saturday, also took sixth in Stage 1. Crested Butte’s Erin Kelly, competing in the women’s 30-plus category, was the seventh woman to finish Sunday. In addition to the 52 pro women, another 28 women between 19 and 65 are competing in the six stages of this year’s Epic.

Stage 2, The Colorado Trail, covering more than 42 miles and 6,500 feet of elevation, launches from Downtown Breckenridge on Monday morning.

Hobbs again. Throwing some ¡Olé! – Image: Jace Stout

Dumke, Hobbs, Armstrong: THIS. This is the way. Image: Jace Stout

Riley Amos and Robbie Day – a little friendly side-eye. Image: Eddie Clark

By Shauna Farnell

With Australian two-time reigning Breck Epic champion Lachlan Morton notably absent this year, the 2024 men’s pro field is graced by new, next-level greatness.

Riley Amos, fresh off of his Olympic debut in Paris, where his seventh place finish marked the top performance of any U.S. man in the history of Olympic mountain bike racing, was the first rider to blast across the finish line in Stage 1 of the Breck Epic Sunday. The 22-year-old from Durango lashed the weather-abbreviated, 16.3-mile course in 1 hour, 13 minutes and 11 seconds.

“We have World Champs in two and a half weeks and I needed a good block at altitude. I saw this as such a perfect opportunity to do a race I’ve been looking at but hadn’t been able to do,” the Trek Factory Racing athlete said. “I feel like we miss out on a lot of really cool races here in the states with the World Cup calendar. I’m stoked this lined up well. Colorado is my favorite place to ride. I’ve hardly spent any time on these trails, though. This is some awesome singletrack.”

With the Stage 1 Pennsylvania Gulch course shortened to 16.3 miles due to heavy overnight and morning rain, Amos tried to break from the pack early on, but Bear National Team’s Robbie Day was on his wheel throughout the course, including at the finish line, crossing one second behind the Olympian.

“We were trading pulls,” Amos said of 22-year-old Day from Evergreen. “The top of the first big summit, we descended that road, I got a tiny gap there. We were going so fast down that road because the dirt was good, but there was a couple of corners where we both blew a little bit off the trail. I had a little gap on the next climb, I just tried to stay on it, but I knew if I tried to bridge too hard on the gap it was gonna hurt. He’s so strong, he rode through a 10-second gap back to me. We hit the top together and were playing a little bit of games. Once he bridged back up to me, we backed off the pace and were rotating back and forth. He was leading this last section and I was barely hanging onto him. At that point, I was in the singletrack and all the way to the end, there wasn’t any place to make a move.”

Riley Amos and Robbie Day – a little friendly side-eye. Image: Eddie Clark

Longmont’s Matt Pike rounded out the Stage 1 men’s podium, finishing just off the lead pace in 1:13:49 as fellow Durango rider and Olympian (Rio 2016) Howard Grotts was fourth in 1:15.08 before a flurry of photo finishes. Zach Calton and Sam Brown fired across the line neck and neck in fifth and sixth and Taylor Lideen and Macky Franklin hammered pedal-to-pedal in sixth and seventh.

Amos won his first U23 XCO Word Cup when he was 19 and took gold and numerous podiums in UCI Mountain Bike World Cup U23 races this year, establishing himself among the world’s most dominant young mountain bike racers. He is still reeling from his Olympic experience, having only been home in Colorado for eight days after returning from Paris.

“It happened really fast,” he said. “For a year and a half, we looked forward to the Olympics, then it was there. It was such a surreal experience. So much is going on, you’re just trying to focus on the race. All the nerves, media, everything that goes along with the Olympics, it’s so much bigger than bike racing. It’s crazy how much goes into that one race every four years, then in the blink of an eye, it’s gone. It was such a special day for me in my career and for U.S. mountain biking, especially Haley [Batten, Olympic silver medalist] at the women’s race. It’s something we’ll all remember for a long time. Its’ a huge step forward for a nation.”

Since returning from the world’s biggest sports stage, Amos has been trying to ramp up his legs and lungs at higher elevation.

“I tried to get in three days of high to make this survivable,” he said of the Epic. “I was on the limit today, but it was good.” 

Yes. But it was a wet heat. Unidentoified rider. Image: Devon Balet