Iceland is a special place: Scarcely populated, marbled by glacial lagoons, waterfalls, geysers, fjords, and volcanoes. No wonder that the Blue Lagoon Challenge taking place there is not an ordinary mountain bike race. It is 60km (38mls) long with moderate 600m (1968ft) mostly over gravel roads.

Last year Danish MTB Marathon Champion Sören Nissen took his first win there on a STEVENS Sonora SL. This year he started again closely watched by spectators and rivals alike and against strong national and international competition. So alongside the Danish champion of Team iHUS, the Icelandic Champion Ingvar Omarsson and German National Team rider Louis Wolf stood at the starting line.

Wolf was the first to set a mark in the race: He attacked on the first 10km a tore a huge gap between him and the rest of the field. While the other riders were waiting on last-year’s winner Sören Nissen to catch up to the escapee, he was about saving his power for the final kilometers. So Wolf’s advantage grew to almost two minutes.

”After a while everybody became nervous”, Sören Nissen recalls. ”We began to attack each other but to no avail”, Nissen said. He took his chances when the race approached a couple of smaller climbs in the middle of the race. On the first hill ten riders could keep up, on the second there were only three left. ”From that moment on we collaborated pretty well”, Nissen said. ”Wolf’s advantage continuously became smaller but with 15 remaining km to go it was still one minute.”

So, he shook off his rivals on the next small climb and fought to close the gap to the front but also to increase his advantage over the riders behind him. ”It was crazy, areal thriller. I only knew on the final 200 meters that I would make it”, Nissen said. On the final three kilometers he gave everything defeat Wolf with a miniscule margin right before the finish line and win his second Blue Lagoon victory in a row.