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Australian pro cyclist, Lachlan Morton set a new ‘Everesting’ record, beating the previous record by 7 minutes.
He set the record in Colorado on a 1.9 km stretch of road. He lapped the climb 42 times to cross the required height of 8848 metres.
Morton’s new Everest record is 7 hours, 32 minutes and 54 seconds.
Everesting is a format, where a cyclist needs to climb a cumulative of 8848 metres, the same as Mt. Everest. The first ever Everesting was in 1994 by George Mallory.
Till not so long back, Everesting was something attempted only by madcaps, with a penchant for doing silly things.
Recently, Everesting has caught the imagination of pro cyclists as well. Since there is no organised sport being allowed the global pandemic. Athletes are finding ways to compete on a solo level.
Just recently, on 15th May 2020, Keegan Swenson, had broken the previous record held by another madcap and ex-pro racer, Phil Gaimon. Swenson’s record was short lived as it was broken within the month.
During the pandemic a number of people have also attempted virtual Everesting on indoor trainers.
In India, Sumit Patil was the first from the country, to go for a successful Everesting attempt in 2015. Now there are multiple Indians who have successfully Everested on their cycles. The names of Indian’s who have Everested are below:
1. Sumit Patil, Maharashtra (2015)
2. Ganesh Kumar, Tamil Nadu (2019)
3. Dipankar Paul, Karnataka (2019)
4. Yuvaraj P, Tamil Nadu (2020)
5. Ashish Kasodekar, Maharashtra (2020)
6. Kartik Mistry, (2020)
7. Awa Ching, Manipur (2020)You can read more about Everesting on their website.
You can check out Lachlan Morton’s Everest Stats on Strava.
News Source: Cycling Weekly
On further inspection by the Hells 500 group. They found that the Strava data for the climb was incorrect and Lachlan Morton actually needed to climb that 47 times and not the 42 which he had done.
Most people would be terribly disappointed by the fact that a record they set was left null and void.
So Morton went for the record a week later!
He took a shorter section of the climb and rode 159 km on this occasion compared to 169 km from his first attempt. This time he did a 48th lap as well, just to be safe!
Incredibly on his second attempt, he shaved off another 3 minutes and now is 10 minutes faster than the previous record set by Keegan Swenson.
The new record by Lachlan Morton is 7 hours, 29 minutes and 57 seconds.
The Everesting record fell twice since then. First it was taken by Spanish great, Alberto Contador and then again by a little known Irish cyclist named, Ronan McLaughlin.
Contador dethroned: Irish cyclist breaks Everesting record by 20 minutes
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