2019 Western States 100 Prediction Contest Results

Results from iRunFar’s 2019 Western States 100 prediction contest.

By on August 1, 2019 | Comments

Drymax - Official Sock WS100Here are the results of our 2019 Western States 100 Prediction Contest. This year we had our second-highest-ever number of prediction-contest entrants at over 1,350. 

The Winners

Thank you again to  Drymax, Hoka One One, Buff, Julbo, Altra, Maggie Tides Design, GU, and Squirrel’s Nut Butter for providing the great prizes for the contest. Without them, the only thing to come out of the contest would be bragging rights. On to the winners!

  1. Jerico Leandro Cortado (10 points) is this year’s grand-prize winner with his score evenly split between women and men. On the women’s side, he correctly predicted Kaytlyn Gerbin in sixth, Nicole Bitter in seventh, and Kathryn Drew in eighth. Jerico had two exact picks on the men’s side: Jim Walmsley for the win and Tom Evans in third.
Jerico Leandro Cortado - 1st 2019 WS100 Prediction Contestv2

Jerico’s picks.

  1. David Bresnahan (11 points) took second place by way of the third tiebreaker, a coin flip! Aside from the same picks for the men’s and women’s winners as third-place Jeremy Lakebrink, both had the same gender point breakdown: 3 for the men and 8 for the women. David was spot on in picking Kaci Lickteig as third woman, Jim Walmsley to win for the men, and Matt Daniels to be fourth man.
David Bresnahan - 2nd 2019 WS100 Prediction Contest v2

David’s picks.

  1. Julbo LogoJeremy Lakebrink (11 points) took third on the third tiebreak. David’s strength was on the men’s side where he had a superfecta: picking Jim Walmsley, Jared Hazen, Tom Evans, and Matt Daniels to finish first through fourth in exact order! While David didn’t have a single exact pick correct on the women’s side, each of his five scoring women’s picks were within two spots of the runner’s actual finish.
Jeremy Lakebrink- 3rd 2019 WS100 Prediction Contest v2

Jeremy’s picks.

Matthew Hoadley is our random grand-prize winner for which he gets the same loaded prize pack as Jerico minus the art.

Maggie Tides Design - Westen States 100 print

Maggie Tides Western States print. (prize will be a paper print, rather than canvas)

Squirrel's Nut Butter - logo
Men’s Predictions
Billy Walsh
 and Alex Nichols both had perfect scores on the men’s side. Billy picked the trifecta with Walmsley, Hazen, and Evans on the podium and then Mark Hammond in fifth and Patrick Reagan in eighth. And, get this, Alex had the same five runners spot on! While not counting in the official scoring, Alex edged out Billy for the 8-man total of 30 to 33. Both picked David Laney for fourth, but Alex had Kyle Pietari in sixth and Jeff Browning for seventh as opposed to Billy’s Chris Mocko and Matt Daniels in sixth and seventh.

Women’s Predictions
GU Energy
The overall winner Jerico Leandro Cortado tied Henning Karlsson and David Shoup for the best score on the women’s side with five points.

Final Words
Thanks to the more than 1,300 individuals who fully took part in the contest! We had a lot of fun bringing it to you and hope you had a lot of fun participating.

Sorry for the long delay in publishing these results. The contest’s decade’s old code needed to be updated this year and while the basic results functions were available shortly after the race, there was a small but persistent error in tallying the men’s point totals for some entrants. We were finally able to find and squash that bug last night. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

The Overall Contest Field
Altra logoHere’s a breakdown of the number of folks tallying 50 or fewer points other the past seven years: 2009 – 46, 2010 – 107, 2011 – 274, 2012 – 446, 2013 – 694, 2014 – 683, 2015 – 807, 2016 – 509, 2017 – 208, 2018 – 1,476, 2019 – 999.

Below are the full results:

[A note to email subscribers only: If you can’t see these results, you need to click on the article title in your email to view the article in a web browser.]

Bryon Powell

Bryon Powell is the Founding Editor of iRunFar. He’s been writing about trail running, ultrarunning, and running gear for more than 15 years. Aside from iRunFar, he’s authored the books Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons and Where the Road Ends: A Guide to Trail Running, been a contributing editor at Trail Runner magazine, written for publications including Outside, Sierra, and Running Times, and coached ultrarunners of all abilities. Based in Silverton, Colorado, Bryon is an avid trail runner and ultrarunner who competes in events from the Hardrock 100 Mile just out his front door to races long and short around the world, that is, when he’s not fly fishing or tending to his garden.