Justinas Leveika blows Silk Road Mountain Race apart, while the chase takes shape

Before the start, Justinas Leveika did his best to talk himself off our contenders list.

He’d come from a 14°C cold spell in Norway, had done no altitude preparation, and joked that we should probably remove him from the favourites list altogether.

Five days later, that suggestion hasn’t aged particularly well.

At Kel Suu, Justinas’s advantage over Jens Van Roost was still small enough to disappear over a sleep. Justinas reached CP2 at 20:39, Jens followed at 22:17, and both stopped there. They were close enough to hear one another snoring and coughing.

By the time Justinas stopped in Ak-Kiya, around 1,620 km into the race, he’d opened roughly 180 km over Jens.