AUSTRALIAN Allan Jefferson is your 2022 Race Across America winner! Before we go to Allan, the Tour de France will be pleased to know that the Race Across America is billed as the “world’s toughest bicycle race.”
Allan Jefferson won the Race Across America in 10 days and 15 minutes. The race runs across 12 states which translates to 4,828 kilometers. Cyclists must complete the course in eight days.
According to cyclist.co.uk, “Inaugurated in 1982, the Race Across America (RAAM) runs non-stop from the Pacific to the Atlantic, traversing 4,800 kilometers across the center of the USA.
That’s well over a thousand kilometers more than the average Tour de France. Yet, rather than taking three weeks, the winning rider will complete the course in as little as eight days.
To accomplish this they’ll spend less than an hour off the bike each day. That’s 23 hours rolling at a time. Some will even go as far as Kansas, over 1,500 kilometers into the Midwest, before pausing for the first time.
To achieve this feat, each competitor is followed by a support crew whose job it is to care for and motivate their rider, helping them to eke out every last bit of performance from their screaming bodies.”
Another difference between the Tour de France and Race Across America is the Tour de France has stages which gives competitors time to mentally and physically recover whereas the Race Across America is literally non-stop with, at most, only an hour’s rest for the participants.
Australia native Jefferson, a 54-year-old from Townsville, North Queensland, wasn’t expecting to win the Race Across America.
The rescue helicopter crewman competed in the world’s toughest bicycle race in 2019 but had to withdraw due to health issues.
Since the race started in 1982, Jefferson is only the second Australian man to finish.
The win wasn’t without challenges according to ampc.abc.net.au, “He was on the bike for those first couple of days for 22 hours a day and that put us into a great position for later in the race,” Huppatz said.
“He was having one 90-minute sleep break a day in the first stages.
His derriere took a bit of a beating from sitting on the bike for that extended period, so we were taking him off every couple of hours to dress some wounds,” Huppatz said.
“Mentally, Al went to some places that he’s probably never been. The self-doubt and the denial and the delusions that he had…it was really tough at some stages.”
The biggest winner of Allan’s victory was the thousands of dollars that went to Selectability, Townsville’s mental health charity.
On a side note, Allan and his boss, the man who led Jefferson’s Race Across America support crew, Greg Hautz, will be my guests on podcast Sports For All with the date and time to be announced so please watch out for it.