Here are the results of our 2021 Western States 100 Prediction Contest. This year’s prediction contest had over 1,200 entrants!
Thank you again to Drymax, Hoka One One, Buff, Maggie Tides Design, 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!
First Place: Suneel Apte (11 points) is this year’s grand-prize winner with a mere 2 points on the women’s side along with 9 on the men’s side. On the women’s side, he correctly picked Beth Pascall to win, Brittany Peterson to take fourth, Emily Hawgood to place seventh, and Camelia Mayfield to be eighth. His only perfect pick on the men’s side was Jim Walmsley to win.
Suneel’s picks.
Ok, I’ll pause here as six different entrants nominally tied for second with 11 points. Congrats to Joshua Bergseng, Tom Boland, Nicole Buurma, Melissa Davis, Marissa Harris, and Erik Sandstrom! Of those, four were still tied after the first tie breaker–accuracy of masters picks–with only Melissa Davis and Nicole Buurma dropping out of the running.
Now, on to the second tie break! Tom Boland (252 second tie breaker points) takes fifth as he correctly picked Beth Pascall to win, but his pick for men’s winner, Jared Hazen, dropped out. In fourth, it’s Marissa Harris (16 second TB points), who correctly picked Jim Walmsley to win, but picked up 16 points in choosing Clare Gallagher to win. Erik Sandstrom (3 second TB points) is third in picking Walmsley to win and was just three places off in picking Brittany Peterson to win. And, in second, on the basis of correctly picking both Pascall and Walmsley to win, it’s Joshua Bergseng! In case you missed it, all four of the entrants tied for second after the first tie breaker had at least one winner picked correctly. Well done, all!
Second Place: Joshua Bergseng (12 points) was spot on for three picks in the women’s race with Pascall in first, Debats in third, and Audrey Tanguy in sixth, along with getting winner Walmsley and Hayden Hawks in eighth correct. He had quite an even split between the men’s and women’s at 7 and 5 points, respectively. As noted above, it’s Bergseng’s correct picks of both overall winners that granted him sole possession of second place.
Joshua’s picks.
Third Place: Erik Sandstrom (12 points) made hay on the men’s race, correctly picking Walmsley, Kyle Pietari, and Stephen Kersh to finish first, sixth, and seventh, while only being one spot off for Tim Tollefson (fourth instead of fifth) and two off for Alex Nichols (eighth instead of 10th) to come in with the lowest men’s point total of the 1,200-plus entrants. Camelia Mayfield in eighth was Sandstrom’s sole perfect pick in the women’s race.
Erik’s picks.
Henry McBride is our random grand-prize winner for which he gets the same loaded prize pack as Suneel minus the art.
Maggie Tides Design Western States 100 Triptych.
This year, there was a two-way tie for the top performance in the men’s open category with Erik Sandstrom and Nicole Buurma with 3 total points. We’ve laid out Erik’s picks for this performance above, but here’s what Nicole did. She correctly picked Walmsley and Tyler Green to go one-two and Kersh to finish seventh. She then tallied 1 point for picking Tollefson to finish fourth instead of fifth and 2 points for picking Drew Holmen to finish fifth instead of third.
Women’s Predictions
Beating out a handful of others by 1 point with only 1 point for the women was David Hedges, who correctly picked the trifecta of Pascall, Croft, Debats to win, place, and show, as well as Katie Asmuth to place fifth. His only accrued point was for picking Keely Henninger to take eighth, one place off her ninth-place finish.
Final Words
Thanks to the more than 1,200 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.
The Overall Contest Field
Here’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, 2021 – 646.
Below are the full results:
