It’s not often that your speed on a bike is higher than the temperature outside, but then again not all of us are Cole House.
A seasoned road racer, House absolutely dusted his competitors in the Fat Bike Birkie this weekend with a powerful sprint finish in the hard, packed snow. Despite finding himself near the back of his group coming into the finish, House still managed to unleash a 30-mph sprint on his titanium rig to clinch the third-place spot on the podium.
The amazing moment was caught on video, courtesy of the mapping service Trail Genius:
“Sprinting on the fat bike feels pretty much like sprinting on a mountain bike,” House told Bicycling. “It’s pretty smooth.”
About 800 riders took part in the 29-mile Fat Bike Birkie, an annual wintertime fat-bike race held in Cable, Wisconsin, on Saturday. They may have looked like Michelin men all bundled up in the freezing weather, but the competition was fierce. Men and women race together but compete for (equal) prize purses and podiums.
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House said the course this year was fast but challenging. “Like a 40-foot-wide fat-bike superhighway,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it was never actually flat.” So good were the conditions that winner Chris Stephens averaged more than 19 mph for the whole course.
Despite the high turnout, and the growth of fat biking as a sport in general, House said he had never seen such a finish.
“I think it was the first time I've ever seen an actual group sprint at the end of a fat-bike race,” he said. “Most people, when they think of fat bikes, they think of slow and boring. But once those big tires get rolling, it’s crazy to see how fast fat bikes can go.”
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