BOULDER, Colo. — The four Americans who won the BOLDERBoulder professional races in 2023 will all return to defend their titles in 2024.
Last year marked just the second time that Americans swept all four of the elite races:
- Conner Mantz, of Provo, in the professional men's race
- Emily Durgin, of Flagstaff, in the professional women's race
- Howie Sanborn, of Denver, in the professional men's push-rim wheelchair
- Kendall Gretsch, of Colorado Springs, in the professional women's push-rim wheelchair
Mantz fought back from fourth place in the 2023 race to pass Alex Masai of Kenya and win the race by three seconds. Mantz crossed the finish line in 29 minutes and 8 seconds.
He has already had a successful start to 2024 — in February, he won the U.S. Olympic Trials for the marathon, which he finished in 2 hours, 9 minutes and 5 seconds, just ahead of his teammate Clayton Young, who is also running the BOLDERBoulder this year after finishing 11th last year. Both will run in the Paris Olympics this summer.
Durgin dominated the BOLDERBoulder women's professional race in 2023, crossing the line nearly 24 seconds before the next woman. Her finish time was 33 minutes and 24 seconds.
She has also had an impressive start to 2024: Durgin competed in the marathon Olympic Trial in February, which she finished in 2 hours, 27 minutes and 56 seconds, earning her ninth place. She also claimed her first USA Track & Field crown at the USATF 10 Mile Championships in Washington, DC on Sunday, where she built a strong lead from the very start. Durgin finished the 10-mile race in 51 minutes and 26 seconds, narrowly missing the American women's record for the distance.
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Boulder city leaders preparing for 2024 BOLDERBoulder race
In the men's push-rim wheelchair race, Sanborn fought his way to his first BOLDERBOULDER title in 2023, finishing in 24 minutes and 57 seconds. It was quite the drop in time after he finished in about 31 minutes in 2022. The retired U.S. Army veteran was cycling with a friend in 2012 when a distracted driver hit him from behind, paralyzing him from the waist down.
On March 8, he qualified for his first Paralympic Games at the 2024 Americas Paratriathlon Championships in Miami, so keep an eye out for him in Paris this summer.
And there's a special twist for Sanborn this year: the Boulder race falls on his 42nd birthday.
Gretsch, in the women's push-rim wheelchair race, is returning to Boulder to defend a third straight win in the competition. She won the 2022 race in 28 minutes and 3 seconds, which she bested in 2023 for a time of 27 minutes and 30 seconds.
The three-time Paralympian was born with spina bifida. She made her Paralympic debut at the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games, where she won two gold medals in Nordic skiing. She also became a paratriathlon gold medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games.
The 2024 BOLDERBoulder 10K returns this Memorial Day, on May 27. The wheelchair pro races kick off first, just before 7 a.m., followed by the open race of more than 40,000 people, and then the professional women's race at 11:15 a.m. and professional men's at 11:26 a.m.
Denver7 is a proud sponsor. You can still register for the race online here.
