Schultz takes Whiskey 50 after Juarez drifts off course

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Andy Schultz (Kenda-Felt MTB Team) won the Whiskey 50 endurance mountain-bike race in Prescott, Arizona, on Saturday after race leader Tinker Juarez (Cannondale Factory Racing) veered off course in the closing miles and missed the finish. The pair had been off the front together up the course’s penultimate climb when Juarez pulled away, only to lose track of course markings in the final miles to town leaving Schultz with the victory and a new course record.

Jeff Herrera finished second in the open men’s class and Lance Runyan was third. Endurance professional and TransAlps veteran Gretchen Reeves (Tokyo Joe’s) was the first female finisher ahead of Sarah Kaufmann and Sonya Looney.

Perfect weather sets up course-record pace

Mild conditions in Prescott, located at 5,300-feet elevation in the center of Arizona, and a contingent of nationally-ranked endurance professionals in the 375-rider field (including Rebecca Rusch, Jeff Kerkove, Ariel Lindsley, Yuri Hauswald among others), setup a quick pace for the event.

"There was a big group together through the pavement," Schultz said at the finish line. "Then it kicks up and gets steep right before you hit dirt so I pushed the pace into the singletrack and by the time we got off, there was four of us left."

Tinker Juarez was one of the four. The two managed to escape the lead group together on the 10-mile ascent out of Skull Valley. Schultz, who plans to race a calendar of elite-level cross country this season culminating with the Firecracker 50 marathon National Championships in Breckenridge, Colorado, took the lead on the climb.

"I couldn't shake Tinker though," he said. "With maybe two miles to go on the climb, he started gapping me."

Even though he started to gap Schultz, Juarez wasn't sure he was clear. "I could see that he was getting farther back but I still thought he was setting me up for something," Juarez said. "So we hit this fast downhill singletrack and I just kept it going."

Juarez led out of the forest and back into town. All he needed to win was to cruise in to the finish line. But he made a wrong turn, handing the victory to Schultz. "In town I got to an intersection with a signal and I was not sure exactly where to go," he wrote on his blog. "Apparently, there was supposed to be someone there to direct us to turn left. But my time had beat the course record and they didn't expect anyone so quickly. So I figure the traffic director arrived about a minute after I passed the intersection."

Juarez added that after a long drive to the event the day before the race, he missed critical information about the course that could have helped him. "We were beat after the long drive, though, and while the late evening rider's meeting was going on, we were already sleeping. That was probably the fatal flaw."

Once off course, it took Juarez a while to figure out his mistake. "I couldn't believe it," he said after finally finding the finish line. "I know I'm old but it can't be just the age. There weren't enough people there to tell me where to go. It just kicks me."

"On a personal level, I feel terrible," said race promoter Todd Sadow of Epic Rides. "It's never good to see anyone get lost on a course, especially when they’re in first place. We hope we can get him back here next year with better knowledge of the course so we can see him victorious."

The pedigree of the other women in the field in mind was the key to Gretchen Reeves' win in her first race of the season, according to the rider. "I saw Rebecca Rusch on the first climb," Reeves said after the race. "So I rode like she was right behind me the whole time."

The 26-year-old Schultz, from Durango, Colorado, will next race at the Mellow Johnny's Classic US Pro XCT race at Lance Armstrong’s Austin, Texas ranch while 49-year-old Juarez heads for Spain to compete in a four-day stage race. Reeves, 38, of Avon, Colorado, said she picks events for their fun and challenge factor and will compete in the Teva Games this year. Reeves is a veteran of the TransAlps mountain-bike stage race and will contest the Trans Rockies in 2010 along with her boyfriend.

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