Ep. 173 ~ Lewis Ciddor, 3rd Place at Tour Te Waipounamu

Bikes or Death

Patrick Farnsworth

Sports, Health & Fitness, Wilderness

4.8 • 563 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2024

⏱️ 130 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we are catching up with Lewis Ciddor after his impressive 3rd place finish at Tour Te Waipounamu. Many of you will be familiar with Lewis. He won the Tour Divide in 2018 and was the host of the Overland Archive Podcast for many years. Lewis was on the show in Aug. of 2020 for Ep. 51. Since then I've noticed he's been keeping a lower profile. Not entering races, not releasing episodes of his own podcast, not posting on social media as much, so when I saw him back in the race lineup I was eager to catch up with him.

I was also eager to hear more about the Tour Te Waipounamu. It takes place on the south island of New Zealand and looks to be equal parts challenging and beautiful. The route is known for a variety of terrain, river crossings, hike a bikes, and off trail navigating. In other words, it's a real challenge. In the world of ultra endurance mountain biking, this race stands out as being particularly hard, and that's saying something.

It had been four years since Lewis had raced before lining up at TTW. Any doubts he had going into that race about being the racer he once was were going to be faced on the beautifully rugged terrain that is Tour Te Waipounamu. Not all victories come in the form of winning. For Lewis, his victory came by facing and overcoming challenges during the race that at one point had him in 12th place with only 300 miles to the finish. On today's episode Lewis takes us through his journey as he made his way through the field and onto the podium in his first race in 4 years.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Bikes for Death podcast.
0:03.4	As always, my name is Patrick, and I'm your host.
0:06.5	And on today's episode, I'm excited to bring you a chat with my friend, Louis Sador,
0:11.7	who is fresh off his third place finish at Torte Wipunamu, which is a relatively new race.
0:19.4	This was its third year, and it takes place on the southern
0:23.4	island of New Zealand. Many of you may be familiar with Lewis. He was the 2018 Tour
0:30.1	Divide winner, and he was also the host of another bikepacking podcast called Overland
0:35.9	Archive. But if you're new to the scene, you may not be
0:40.5	as familiar with Lewis as he's been keeping a lower profile over the last four years.
0:47.0	The last race he won was in 2020 at the Vic Divide, which is actually the race that he created. And since then, I've noticed
0:57.0	that he hasn't been releasing episodes on his podcast and he hasn't been entering races and has
1:03.3	been keeping a lower profile on social media and such. And as a fan, I was really excited to see
1:10.7	him back in the lineup racing again. I was excited
1:14.2	to see him get a great result. And I was really excited to chat with him on today's episode and
1:20.7	catch up with him to see what's been going on. And one of the really cool storylines about his
1:27.0	race at TTW was that at one point with only 300 miles left in the race, he was in 12th position and he managed to ride his way through the field to secure a podium position, which is truly amazing after a four-year hiatus on the race scene.
1:47.2	So it was really cool to catch up with Lewis. I had a great time chatting with them.
1:53.1	And it was really cool to hear about this race. This is the first time we've talked to anyone
1:58.2	who's done the TTW. And this looks absolutely brutal and it looks absolutely beautiful.
2:06.8	And we're going to talk all about it on today's episode.
2:10.6	But before we get into it, let's take a moment to thank the people that made it possible, starting with our latest patron.
2:17.3	This week, we'd like to
	...

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