La Ruta 2011

Todd Wells (USA) takes La Ruta 2011.

"La Ruta" is considered to be one of the world's toughest multi-staged mountain bike races, riding over 400 kilometers in four days to cross Costa Rica from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Lead went on its third La Ruta coverage and international media coordination.

As he did on stages two and three, American Todd Wells kept second-place Rom Akerson of Costa Rica in check on stage four to win the 19th edition of La Ruta de los Conquistadores.

Wells, along with 250 other mountain bikers, rode from Costa Rica’s Pacific coast to the country’s Caribbean shore in 17 hrs 18 mins 06 secs. Akerson was 10:18 back. Colombia’s Luis Mejia finished third overall after winning two stages.

Akerson trimmed Wells’ lead to around seven minutes, which at La Ruta is tenuous at best. But the constant attacking took its toll on Akerson and in the end he gave back three minutes to finish with his best showing ever at La Ruta.

Wells and Akerson garnered much of the attention after the final stage, but it was Costa Rican Moises Hernandez who won the 120km day in a time of 4:00:30. Akerson and Wells finished second with the same time of 4:08:09.Mejia rounded out the top four at 4:10:13.

Costa Rica’s Adriana Rojas won every stage of La Ruta in the women’s contest, finishing the race in 22:22:27. She topped Americans Rebecca Rusch and Louise Kobin by 1:19:38 and 1:45:05 respectively.

The reason Rojas had such a huge gap on Rusch and Kobin is that the two were riding together in a group on stage four and took a wrong turn. The mistake took them on a costly 22km detour.