USA wins 2017 Reebok Spartan Race World Championship at Squaw

Top endurance athletes in the obstacle racing world demonstrated their skill and tenacity at one of the world’s most demanding racing destinations in this weekend’s 2017 Reebok Spartan Race World Championship at Squaw Valley. For a third straight year, a field of elite athletes and more than 15,000 competitors and spectators converged in Olympic Valley to take part in the pinnacle event of the obstacle racing season.

The Spartan Race World Championship featured a suite of competitive events and a total purse of $110,000 in cash and prizes. The feature event Saturday was the grueling 16-mile Elite Championship “Beast” heat, in which elite racers from close to 50 countries crawled through barbed wire, scaled walls, swam through a near-freezing lake and conquered nearly 40 obstacles to determine the individual world champions. The race tested each athlete's strength, endurance, and resolve on unpredictable terrain and over spartan obstacles masterfully designed to push deep beyond the comfort zone.

Fierce competitors earned entry to the Championship heat by finishing in the top five at Spartan Races around the world during the 2017 qualifying season, with this weekend determining the reigning 2017 champion. Cody Moat captured the men’s individual title with a time of 2:32:34 while Lindsay Webster earned the top prize on the women’s side with a 3:06:10 course pace. In addition to bragging rights, both racers took home $15,000 in prize money. Joining Moat on the men’s podium was Jonathan Albon in second and Robert Killian in third. Zuzana Kocumov and Alyssa Hawley rounded out the women’s top three, earning second and third respectively.

Sunday, October 1 marked the inaugural World Team Championship, with international co-ed teams comprised of three elite racers vying for national and international prestige on a demanding 8.5-mile “Super Course.” Team USA (Robert Killian, Alyssa Hawley, and Ryan Woods) emerged victorious, outpacing 26 other tenacious teams to earn first place. Team Canada (Mikhail Gerylo, Austin Azar, and Faye Stenning) finished second with a time of 01:39:09 and the runner-up title. The Czech team (Tomas Satinsky, Zuzana Kocumov, and Tomas Tvrdik) finished third with a time of 01:39:19. All World Team racers also qualified for and competed in Saturday’s World Championship Beast event.

Sunday also featured the arduous 26-mile Ultra Beast race, featuring more than 70 obstacles, in which Ryan Atkins secured the win in a time of 06:40:05, as well as a kids’ competition and a CEO challenge. In total, the Spartan World Championship courses saw more than 15,000 participants fight the unforgiving terrain.

In a first step towards eventually meeting the international standards set by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Spartan tested eight athletes at this weekend’s Reebok Spartan Race World Championship for prohibited substances.

In just seven years, the Spartan race series - with one million annual participants in more than 200 races across 30 countries - has become the premier competitive endurance race in the world. Visit http://www.spartan.com for more information.

- Provided to South Tahoe Now