Photo by Meghan Hicks/iRunFar.com
After months of polling our readers have spoken and named Stevie Kremer Colorado’s Ultimate Mountain Athlete. That does not come as a big surprise. Few people embody the mountain town athlete ethos better. Kremer, who works as a second grade teacher in Crested Butte and got married just last week, is simply a beast on the trail. In 2014, she won the World Skyrunning title with victories in the Matterhorn Ultraks 46k Skyrace and the 31k Sierre-Zinal Mountain Race in Switzerland. In 2013, she also won the title thanks to first place finishes in the Italy’s Limone Extreme Skyrace (with its 6,500-foot climb), the Marathon du Mont Blanc. In 2012, she won Switzerland’s Jungrfrau Marathon. Here in Colorado, she has won Aspen’s Gold Leaf Half Marathon six times and set the course record on the Mount Evans Ascent. Oh, the Salomon athlete is also a world-class ski mountaineer, taking the overall North American championship in 2103. Huge congratulations to Stevie and all of the athletes in our poll.
You can read the original story and see all the athletes who were nominated and read about the winners in each category HERE.
We decided to run men and women together in our Top Colorado Mountain Athlete poll and it was refreshing to see women take three of the five final spots (Kremer, climber Alex Puccio and paddler/SUP champ Jenny MacArthur). In winning the reader’s choice for Ultimate Colorado Mountain Athlete, Kremer beat out Puccio and MacArthur (who finished second) as well as extreme skier, Red Bull athlete and EO’s January-February cover model Chris Davenport and two-time USA Pro Challenge champion Tejay van Garderen. Kremer and women athletes in general have earned their place at the top of the Colorado mountain athlete pantheon, not only can they play with the boys—they are beating them.
AND LEST WE FORGET (OR YOU REMIND US)…
We first posted this reader poll in November. Alex Puccio beat out Tommy Caldwell by one percentage point to win the Climbing category. Since then, Caldwell pulled off the hardest, most epic free climb ever attempted on the Dawn Wall in Yosemite and brought the sport more mainstream attention than it has ever experienced before. So we would feel remiss if we didn’t at least give Tommy Caldwell some recognition here, too. Soooooo….
Check out this amazing 360-degree photosphere from Google of Caldwell on the Dawn Wall.
