French mountain biker Victor Bosoni has just set a new record for mountain biking the Tour Divide with a finish time of 11 days, 7 hours, and change, according to data collected by Track Leaders. The 24-year-old from Corgoloin, France, smashed the previous record, set by Justinas Leveika in 2024, by more than a day.
Bosoni’s moving average was over 14mph along the Tour Divide route, and including stops, he still averaged almost 10mph. He clocked about 235mi of riding each day on his rigid Factor SARANA drop-bar mountain bike, climbing a total of 100,000+ feet overall.
Bosoni pulled away from the pack at about the 100-mile mark and would build on his lead throughout the race. Laurens Ten Dam is currently riding in second place, more than 300 miles behind Bosoni as of press time.
Sponsored by Factor Bikes, Rapha, and Coros, among others, Bosoni is no stranger to podium finishes. Earlier this year, he took first place in the Traka 560, a 560km race with more than 10,000m of climbing in a time of 22 hours and 11 minutes. It was his second Traka 560 win in a row.
No asterisk
The Tour Divide is an annual ride along the rugged 2,700-mile+ Great Divide mountain bike route stretching from Banff, Alberta, to the US-Mexico border near Antelope Wells, New Mexico. Though it’s not an official race, there are several rules that challengers agree to follow. Among those rules, riders who wish to be considered for the Tour Divide General Classification (GC) must ride completely alone and self-supported, and must cover every inch of the route.
Justinas Leveika set the fastest official Tour Divide finish in 2024: 13 days 2 hours 16 mins. The next year, in 2025, Robin Gemperle finished the Tour Divide in 11 days 19 hours 14 mins, and was the first to reach Antelope Wells. However, Gemperle’s speed record came with an asterisk, as the 2025 route was shortened by approximately 140 miles due to wildfires.
To add even more confusion, in 2023 Lachlan Morton recorded what many consider to be the fastest known time (FKT) along the Tour Divide route: 12 days, 12 hours, and 21 minutes. Morton did not take place in that year’s grand depart, opting to ride the route on his own months later. And most crucially for the record, his attempt is not considered for the GC because he had a film crew accompanying him.
Meaghan Hackinen of Kelowna, BC, is the current leader among the women in this year’s Tour Divide, and is on pace to best her own record time of 15 days, 23 hours, and 00 minutes set in 2024. However, the fastest known time set by a woman along the Tour Divide belongs to Austin Killips, who finished just under 14 days that same year. Killips has the fastest known time for an individual time trial (ITT) while Hackinen is recognized as the fastest woman to complete the Tour Divide challenge.
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