Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 97, August 2017 | Page 18

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Conquering
At the end of June, ultra trail runner Ryan Sandes added yet another prestigious win to his already impressive record when
he won the Western States 100 Miler in California in the USA, but he had to overcome extreme racing conditions before he
could finally claim the win he has been chasing since 2012. – BY SEAN FALCONER
race and couldn’t run. In 2014 I was fifth, but after
too much racing that year I was overcooked. In 2015 I
got sick the Thursday night before the race and woke
up dizzy and nauseous. I still tried to register, but
almost collapsed, so I stumbled back to the hotel and
missed the race. Then in 2016 I didn’t go, so I wanted
to go back in 2017 and finally put it to bed.”
BRUTAL RACING CONDITIONS
Well, that’s exactly what he did. Overcoming brutal
running conditions, he maintained a steady pace
More titles followed in the next few years. In 2011
he won the Leadville 100 Miler in the USA, in 2012
the North Face 100 Miler in Australia, and in 2014 he
won the North Face TransGranCanaria on the Canary
Islands, a race that forms part of the prestigious Ultra
Trail World Series Tour, which he now competes on
each year. But there was one win he still wanted, in a
race that he had come to obsess about, the Western
States 100 Miler in the USA. “It’s just an iconic event,
the original 100-mile trail race, and has a lot of
history,” explains Ryan. “The legends of the sport have
run it and won it, including Scott Jurek, Kilian Jornet
and others. But for me, what makes the race so cool
is the community that gets behind the race. Well over
2000 volunteers work on a race that only takes around
350 entries each year!”
“I finished second there in my debut in 2012, with a
super fast time that also broke the course record, but
then in 2013 I injured my ankle six weeks before the
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ISSUE 97 AUGUST 2017 / www.modernathlete.co.za
throughout to eventually take the lead in the second
half of the race, and went on to claim the win in 16
hours 19 minutes 39 seconds, but he admits it was
one of the toughest years ever for this race. “After a
really huge winter, there was loads of snow still on the
mountains, and they even had a ‘plan B’ to avoid the
snow, but they announced two days before the race
that we would use the original route. The first 30km
were all snow, which took up to 20% more energy
than normal to get through and made it slow-going
to start off, so we were already on the back foot by
B
een there, won it… that’s pretty much how one
can sum up 34-year-old Ryan Sandes’ ultra-
distance trail running career. He burst onto the
world stage in 2008 as he won both the Sahara and
Gobi March events, two of the four races that make
up the 4 Deserts Challenge. The following year he
finished second in RacingThePlanet Namibia, then won
the Jungle Ultra Marathon in Brazil, and then in 2010
he added the Atacama Desert and Antarctica events
to not only join a very small group to have ever done
all four of the big desert races, but become the only
runner to have won all four of these gruelling 250km,
six- to seven-day events.