Secures second place in age category

Amit Samarth and Srinivas Gokulnath complete RAAM for the second time

Results are provisional

Kabir Rachure got his third successful finish at Race Across America (RAAM) on Saturday, June 24, 2023, with a second place in his age group to boot.

He finished on the tenth day – 10 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes – from race commencement, a much-valued objective among Indian aspirants. The result is an improvement on Kabir’s timing from the 2022 RAAM, when he had completed the race in 11 days, 11 hours and 25 minutes and placed third his age category of men under 50. That was his second finish in RAAM’s solo segment. Earlier in 2019, his first successful completion of RAAM had been in 11 days, 22 hours and 43 minutes.

Hours after Kabir crossed the finish line at 2023 RAAM, Amit Samarth and Srinivas Gokulnath registered their second successful completion of the race. Amit completed in 11 days, four hours and 38 minutes; Srinivas in 11 days, six hours. In 2017, Srinivas had been the first Indian to complete RAAM in the solo category. He took 11 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Amit followed Srinivas to the finish line in 11 days and 21 hours, giving India two solo finishers that year.

At the time of writing, the 2023 race results were provisional. According to some of those tracking RAAM from India, there was an incident of forest fire en route due to which, participants were advised travel in vehicles between two time-stations (TS 8 and TS 9). Subsequently, as the race continued, there appears to have been two notes to participants on the subject. In their first communique, race organizers informed that solo riders may see time adjustment of nine hours post-race. Later, a note of June 22, while not mentioning nine hours, said (among other things), “ Cut offs remain as they are in the rules and this adjustment taken after the fact will not affect your official finish status but will affect your final speeds and race data.’’ It added that until the final adjustment is made, “ all awards and records will be provisional.’’ As per this note, the shuttle of 102.8 miles (165.44 kilometres) between time-stations 8 and 9 reduced this year’s course length to 2934.09 miles (4721.96 kilometres).

RAAM normally spans a little over 3000 miles (4800 kilometres), from the west coast of the United States to its east. The cut off time to complete RAAM solo, is 12 days. “ Finishing RAAM itself is a Herculean task,’’ Bharat Pannu, among leading ultra-cyclists in India and a RAAM aspirant, said on Kabir’s performance and how it would be a new benchmark for those set to follow. The 2023 RAAM was won by Isa Pulver of Switzerland. She covered the distance in nine days, 12 hours and 16 minutes; only the second instance of a woman winning RAAM’s solo category overall, after Leah Goldstein of Canada in 2021.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This report will be updated if there are any changes to the performance data quoted as a consequence of the post-race time adjustment.)