Belgian Waffle Ride: Hayden Christian secures Quad-Tripel Crown of Gravel with victory in Montana while Cécile Lejeune wraps up women's overall title with runner-up finish

Hayden Christian (Trek-MAAP Pro.Fwd) carved his way around the two decisive singletrack turns to win Belgian Waffle Ride Montana, proving the fastest among a group of five elite men on the final half mile of the 115-mile (185km) course into Bozeman.

Stella Hobbs (MAAP-ENVE-Tailwind) won her second consecutive elite women's victory at BWR Montana, this year going solo in the elite women's division with a time of 5:07:39.

Cécile Lejeune (Trek Driftless) finished seven minutes behind Hobbs for second, which confirmed her position as overall winner in the Quad-Tripel Crown of Gravel. Lejeune opened her BWR account with a third place in Arizona and then sealed the overall with back-to-back wins at BWR California and BWR Utah. Hannah Shell finished second overall, just 8 points ahead of Holly Breck.

Hobbs got away from Lejeuen with 30 miles to go, and both finished with an average speed of more than 21 mph.

"It's how riding goes here - nothing's that long and nothing's that steep. So if you can capitalise on every little bit that there is, you can really move through this course fast. We were hauling," Hobbs said at the finish to organisers.

The men's Quad-Tripel Crown was decided at Saturday's sprint, Christian earning the title by just eight points over Lance Haidet (Colnago-SRAM-Velocio), who finished third in the final race. Christian progressed up the leaderboard at all four stops of the series, starting with 11th place at Arizona, then fifth at California and third at Utah, which put him two points behind Haidet going into the final race.

Christian and Haidet rode in the decisive lead group with Elliot Thornblade (Forward Endurance Coaching), Matthew Saldana (Cyclesport.com) and Ryker Brand (ALLIED-Formula 369). Thornblade made a late pass of Christian with a shoulder bump on the final dirt section, but Christian swooped inside Thornblade with another body barge 100 yards later to take the lead for the final 50 metres to the line, winning in 4:45:32. Haidet grabbed the final podium ahead of Saldana while Brand was distanced in fifth.

It was the second edition of BWR Montana, which moved to a new start/finish at Glen Lake Park in Bozeman. The long route skirted the Blacktail mountain range in south-west Montana but still amassed 7,500 feet of climbing across 70% of 'unroad' on a new course.

Results

Series standings