Granfondo rolls through Penticton

Seth Cowrie said his win at the 2018 Granfondo Axel Merckx in Penticton came down to a last minute decision.

“There was one guy up the road, and he was within sight,” said Cowrie, who was competing in his third Granfondo this year.

“There was about five kilometres left, and just managed to put in enough of a move that it stuck and it worked out well,” said Cowrie. Cowrie finished the 160-kilometre Granfondo with a time of 4:06:49.

“You do it enough, you get used to it. It was tough though, it was a hard four hours out there,” said Cowrie.

“That Summerland climb right at the start is really tough, and then the climb at Fairview, cause you are about 110 kilometres into the race and then you have a nice steep sharp climb, everyone is putting it all out there.”

Nick Friesen and Grant Gill were hard on his heels, both coming across the finish line at 4:06:54.

Dustin Pakosh was first in for the inaugural 126 km event with a time of 3:24:18, followed by Steve Petrarch at 3:24:19 and Karim Jandali at 3:24:20.

“I didn’t think it was going to happen. They told me I was first, but I thought there were people in front of us, so it was kind of surprising,” said Pakosh.

The top three finishers in the 92-km Mediofondo were Conor Martin (2:18:50), Lee Agur (2:23:23) and Tony Winter (2:27:38).

For the 55-km Cortofondo, the top finishers were Joshua Myers (1:33:36), Brian Butt (1:44:31) and A.J. Timewell (1:44:36).

A total of 1543 men and 751 women participated in this year’s Granfondo events.