Australian endurance runner Phil Gore has won the Backyard Ultra World Championship in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.<\/p>\n
Gore was the last athlete standing after nearly five days of competition, having completed 114 laps of the 6.7 kilometre course, or about 764km in total.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s been an amazing event,” Gore said shortly after winning.<\/p>\n
“Obviously I wanted to get here four years ago but couldn\u2019t because of COVID.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Two years ago I had my chance and it didn\u2019t quite work out for me, so I\u2019m happy to get here now and get the win.”<\/p>\n
The gruelling backyard ultra format requires competitors to complete a loop or ‘yard’ every hour, on the hour, until there is just one person left.<\/p>\n
Belgium\u2019s Ivo Steyaert was the last of Gore\u2019s rivals to drop out of the race, during the 113th lap on Thursday afternoon AEDT, after the race had started at 11pm on Saturday night AEDT.<\/p>\n
The tight turnaround times between laps mean competitors have little time to sleep or wash during the event.<\/p>\n
“Oh, you stink,” Gore was told by his wife Gemma, as they embraced after his final lap.<\/p>\n
Gore said his priorities after winning the race would be “a sleep \u2026 and a shower”.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m tired, I just want to sleep,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s been a lot of time throughout this event where I\u2019ve been really confused, like I was out running on the road by myself and I was like “how did I get here? What am I doing?’<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s definitely been an adventure and I\u2019m looking forward to going and getting some proper sleep.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this year Gore set a new backyard ultra world record by running 119 laps, or 797.3km, at the Dead Cow Gully Backyard Masters event outside Nanango, 180km north-west of Brisbane.<\/p>\n
He said that now he is the world champion as well as being world record holder, he could start looking for new challenges.<\/p>\n
“I might retire from backyards now and go and do something else,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian endurance runner Phil Gore has won the Backyard Ultra World Championship in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Gore was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,140938,140940,140941,140939,85],"class_list":["post-234920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-backyard-ultra-world-championship","tag-gemma-gore","tag-ivo-steyaert","tag-phil-gore","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}