Breck local Josh “Toast” Tostado won his third consecutive Breckenridge 100 on Sunday, finishing the brutal 100-mile mountain bike race in 9 hours, 5 minutes, 8 seconds.
Tostado, a 2005 Montezuma’s Revenge champion who ranks as one of the state’s strongest mountain bikers, led the entire race. He finished more than an hour ahead of second-place racer Michael Janelle of Vail and legendary endurance racing pioneer Tinker Juarez.
Breck’s Monique Merrill won the women’s race, followed by Glenwood’s Kelley Mattingly and Julie Minahan of Park City, Utah.
ACTION SPORTS
White, Dhers among repeaters
Hold a mirror to the first stop of this summer’s Dew Tour and you’ll get … the second stop. All of the winners from the tour’s first stop in Baltimore climbed again to the top of the podium in this past weekend’s event in Cleveland.
Shaun White showed his competitive colors Saturday by winning the vert skate comp in his third and final round, after falling on his first two runs. He was followed by defending Dew Cup champ Bucky Lasek and Bob Burnquist. Venezuelan Daniel Dhers won the BMX park comp and donated his $15,000 prize to Stephen Murray, the rider who broke his neck in the tour’s first stop last month. Nate Adams took his second tour win in FMX, Ryan Nyquist took his second win in BMX dirt and skateboarding’s teenage king Ryan Sheckler again won the skate park comp.
MOUNTAIN BIKING
Montezuma’s Revenge race off
Last-minute backpedaling by a key sponsor has left the 21st annual Montezuma’s Revenge on the shelf this year. Set to begin Friday, the storied mountain bike race will sit out this year after sponsorship troubles and a lack of preregistered racers forced organizer Byron Swezy to pull the plug. Swezy said the event – billed as the toughest mountain bike race in the world – will return next year, and he has enlisted endurance cycling legend Nat Ross as the race director.
ROAD CYCLING
Danielson first in Evans Climb
Team Discovery rider Tom Danielson fell short of breaking his record Saturday at the Bob Cook Memorial Mount Evans Hill Climb but still won. Finishing the climb in 1 hour, 43 minutes, 4 seconds, Danielson arrived shy of his 2004 record of 1:41:20 and clung to a mere 49-second lead over second-place racer Scott Moninger. Michael Carter took third in the all-uphill race that climbs 6,920 feet in 27.35 miles before finishing at a lung-roasting 14,135 feet. Michelle Steiner won the women’s race in 2:22:04, followed by Kate van Valkenburg and Amy Dombroski.
DISABLED ATHLETES
Paralympian Dukat retires
Multiple Paralympic and World Championships medalist Sandy Dukat of Vail has retired from competition after a seven-year career with the U.S. Disabled Alpine Ski Team.
Born without a right femur, Dukat, 35, was first a member of the U.S. Disabled Swimming Team. It wasn’t until after the 1998 World Swimming Championships that she was introduced to skiing at the age of 25 through the National Sports Center for the Disabled (NCSD) in Winter Park. After being named to the Team in 2000, she won bronze medals in the super G and slalom at the 2002 Paralympics, took third in downhill, SG and giant slalom at the 2004 World Championships and capped her career with bronze in SL at the 2006 Paralympics.
Dukat intends to join former teammate Hannah Pennington from Denver, Liz Miller of Great Britain and Katja Saarinen, a two-time Paralympic skier for Finland, to climb Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro. The journey dubbed Disabilities Without Boundaries is designed to raise awareness about women athletes with physical disabilities.
Dukat will continue living in Vail and departs for Tanzania on Sept. 8. To learn more and to follow along with the journey, log on to .
CLIMBING
Weekes soars in Cliffhanger
Denver dyno-climber Skyler Weekes recently earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest “dyno” move ever recorded – an 8-foot, 6-inch leap up the wall at the July 14 “Cliffhanger” competition in Sheffield, England.
Likened to the high jump competition for climbers, dyno is an off-shoot of sport climbing in which athletes launch themselves upward to reach higher handholds on an artificial climbing wall. To achieve the record, Weekes reached the 8 1/2-foot mark in a single move.
“I’ve been training very hard with one of the top trainers in the country, Darren Flagg, founder of Animal Strength in Boulder,” Weekes said. “He has really taught me how to accomplish physical feats I never thought were possible.”
In June 2005, Weekes took a headfirst fall in a dyno competition at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail. He suffered a fractured spine and shattered his left orbital socket, requiring six facial reconstruction surgeries in the past two years.
