Kiwi wins world's toughest mountain bike race in epic duel

Monday, 26 August 2024

Joe Nation knew the race leader was close, just a few twists in the gravel road ahead of him.

It was the fifth day of the world’s toughest mountain bike event, the Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan, and Christchurch rider Nation had steadily made his way through the field after a horror start.

Now, as he chased the leader up yet another remote 4000-metre pass, night enveloped him. Within minutes, a wild storm hit.

As the skies threw down lightning and thunder, Nation found riding virtually impossible. Mud clogged his chain, causing it to fall off.

“I was thinking, this is a bit hairy,” he said. “And it was freezing.”

Caught on a high plateau, soaked through, he started searching for rocky outcrops to shelter under. Then, out of the dark, a Kyrgyz shepherd appeared, beckoning Nation towards his yurt to escape the storm.

For the next hour, Nation warmed himself beside their fire and drank soup they offered.

When the lightning stopped, Nation indicated he needed to carry on.

“I couldn’t quite communicate that I was in a 2000km race and I was coming second.

“They kept telling me I’d be eaten by wolves, and he was howling, and saying it was a full moon, and making bite marks and stuff.”

Eventually, Nation insisted he had to go, gave the shepherd his pocket knife as thanks, and pedalled into the night.

“Yeah, that shepherd out there ‒ he saved the day for me.”

By dawn, Nation, a 34-year-old engineer and endurance rider, had managed a couple of hours’ sleep at a checkpoint and was back chasing the race leader ‒ American Tom Schwemberger.

For 12 hours he tracked Schwemberger over another 4000m pass and down valleys where breathing became easier.

And then late that afternoon, Nation caught sight of his quarry, a few kilometres ahead. He hatched a plan to get past him and stay ahead for the 400km to the finish.

Nation figured he’d get one shot, so he had to throw everything at it.

As they reached the bottom of another mountain, Nation pulled alongside Schwemberger for the first time in the race.

“I didn’t even say anything really ‒ just rode past him, gave him a wave, and then attacked on the climb.”

Nation gambled on being able to put a gap on Schwemberger as they headed towards the daunting Shamshy Pass, little more than a horse trail where riders have to push and carry their bikes for 20km, as night fell.

If he was far enough ahead, Nation guessed Schwemberger wouldn’t be able to follow his lights up the pass.

More importantly, having spent six years as a professional enduro mountain bike rider, Nation believed he could make his way down the frightening 2000m descent in the dark, with its numerous river crossings, and that Schwemberger might balk, and wait for dawn before carrying on.

He was right.

Schwemberger hesitated. Nation ignored his fatigue and the effects of altitude and stretched his lead to a few hours.

Early the next morning, Nation paused for an hour’s sleep, then pushed on for the finish line.

“I’d be lying if I said I was completely coherent,” he said.

“But I really didn’t want to give him a sniff, to get back on my tail again.”

Nation rode all that next day, and into the night, fighting off a chest infection. He dragged his bike up the last brutal 4000m pass soon after midnight, with just 50km left in the race.

“That was pretty massive really,” Nation says.

“It’s never over till it’s over, but at the top you know you’ve just got one more massive descent.

“So that was really the first moment I let myself think, I might have done it.”

The race had started so differently.

Leaving Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, last Saturday, Nation was immediately suffering.

“I was really, really bad.

“At one point, I was cramping and falling off my bike, because I was so dizzy with the altitude and heat exhaustion.

“And I was getting passed left, right, and centre.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is an absolute shitshow.’”

Nation, who is fast establishing his reputation among the world’s best endurance riders, decided he had to switch from racing mode to survival mode.

Despite struggling to keep food down, he persevered, covering enough ground each day to stay in touch with the leaders.

And gradually, those leaders started falling back, having gone out hot and then suffered as the race, which includes 30,000m of climbing on gravel roads and tracks, took its toll.

By day four, Nation reached a hotel where he grabbed a wash, four hours’ sleep, and a ticket to the breakfast buffet, which miraculously re-energised his body.

Riders have to be self-sufficient throughout the race, and this usually means surviving on whatever they can buy at scattered village stores.

Apart from the buffet, and two shawarma wraps from a questionable roadside stall, Nation existed on chips, chocolate, ice cream and soft drinks, to replenish the thousands of calories he was burning.

He averaged three hours’ sleep a night and covered about 300km a day.

And while others slowed and succumbed, Nation kept pushing through the field, until he found himself at the front, staring down at victory from the top of the very last pass.

As Nation rode to the finish line in Cholpon-Ata at 3am, Kyrgyz TV tracked alongside him and locals emptied from their houses shouting, “Joe Nation!”

After six days and 18 hours, he reached the end on Saturday morning New Zealand time, to cheers and applause.

There was no hot food available, so Nation made two-minute noodles with cold water, shed the clothes he’d worn for a week, and crashed asleep.

Schwemberger arrived more than eight hours later.

And then four hours after that, fellow Christchurch rider and Nation’s great friend Rufus Wenlock rode down the final street to the finish, to complete a remarkable podium for New Zealand.

“You blew the doors off!” Wenlock exclaimed as he congratulated Nation.

The pair have known each other for nearly 20 years, since they raced downhill together as teenagers, then went travelling the world.

Wenlock was riding a bike he’d designed and built himself in his garage, part of his nascent bike-building business.

He’d suffered food poisoning midway through the race, and had to sleep out on an old Soviet road at 3500m for nine hours, before making a remarkable ride back through the pack, almost catching Schwemberger.

“I’m real glad it didn’t come down to a sprint on that highway,” Wenlock joked at the finish. “I’ve got nothing left in the legs.”

Nation returns home on Friday and will be back at work next week, while making plans for winning more big, gruelling international races.

He’d love to return to the famous 4000km Tour Divide bikepacking race in America where he finished third last year.

That will require backing and sponsors. He’s hoping his Silk Road race victory opens doors.

In the meantime, Nation is reflecting on the biggest win of his career, in a race so extreme, more than a third of the nearly 200-strong field dropped out. He was almost among them.

“It’s interesting following the slow process of the mind, changing from, ‘I can’t finish this,’ to ‘Oh yeah, I could get through,’ to ‘Oh no, we’re actually doing all right now,’ to ‘Hold on ‒ I can win this!’”