It’s Steam Engine Versus Bicycle in the Iron Horse Classic
In 1971, brothers Tom and Jim Mayer unknowingly hatched the idea behind the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, a road race that covers 50 miles over two mountain passes and climbs 6,000 feet.
Jim worked as a brakeman on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, which operated the steam engine between Durango, Colorado and Silverton, Colorado since the 1880s. Tom was a cyclist who often challenged himself on different routes in the mountains.
Tom came up with an idea to challenge his brother — or really himself — to ride the road next to the train tracks and try to beat the steam engine to Silverton. They wagered a candy bar on the results.
According to race history, when Jim pulled into Silverton, Tom was waiting. He’d beaten the train, despite having a longer road and climbing those two mountain passes.
The following year, Tom decided to turn the ride into an event, and see who else could beat the train. So in 1972, a group of 36 riders celebrated the train’s first run of the spring by racing it to Silverton.
Five managed to beat the train, and it’s been a local spring classic ever since.
But today Durango is known mostly as a mountain biker’s paradise. Besides several Mountain Bike Hall of Famers, such as Ned Overend, Greg Herbold, and Missy Giove, many of the current top U.S. riders also call Durango home. Howard Grotts, Payson McElveen, Christopher Blevins, Ruth Holcomb, and Sarah Sturm all train on the roads and trails in Durango, and compete at the elite level around the world.
Durango’s success as a mountain biking haven is due in part to Durango Devo, a rider-development program that trains athletes from a young age in a non-demanding way. It’s all about getting kids to enjoy the mountains and become life-long riders. And it’s because of this heavy focus on mountain biking and off-road riding that the Iron Horse added other events to their schedule besides the road classic.
Now, in addition to racing the train, riders can enter a gravel race on Durango's finest dirt roads, or an XC MTB race on the singletrack surrounding downtown. The weekend is all about enjoying bikes and the mountains, and you can always count on several pros to show up and throw down.
“This year’s mountain bike course has been ridden and raced many times by the sport’s biggest stars,” race director Ian Burnett told Bicycling. “The Iron Horse cross country race has been a mainstay in the Durango cycling calendar for years so we wanted to nod back to our history while creating a course that challenges the current crop of pro riders.”
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