WILMINGTON, N.Y. — Justin Lindine (New Salem, Mass.) was the first rider to cross the finish line, taking top honors in the second annual Wilmington/Whiteface 100K mountain bike race (WW100) held Sunday, June 17, at Whiteface Mountain, in Wilmington, N.Y. Lindine completed the 69-mile long race in four hours, 19 minutes, 15.97 seconds.

The finish earned the pro cyclist his second trip back to the Leadville 100 MTB (LT100), where he was 28th overall last year.

“This was an awesome race and competing here has been a goal of mine all season long,” said the winded Lindine following the race. “I wanted to go back to Leadville, so winning here was a sure way of doing that.”

Last year’s inaugural WW100 race measured 57 miles, but an additional 12 miles were added to this year’s event, which featured a combination of single track, dirt and paved roads, jeeping trails and back country roads.

“The race and the distance felt a lot like Leadville,” remarked the women’s first place finisher Rebecca Rusch (Ketchum, Idaho), who has won three times in Leadville. “All the way through it’s a super tough course, especially when you get to the ski resort, all the ups and downs are challenging. “It’s really a good course, a great town and the people are so supportive.”

Rusch completed here race in 5:02:28.29 and was 21st overall. The out and back course took the field of 358 cyclists through the northern New York towns of Wilmington, Jay, Keene, Lewis and Elizabethtown before returning to the Olympic mountain for a final climb of 2,500 feet. The cyclists also tackled two additional mountain climbs, Jay Mountain and Saddleback Mountain, not once, but twice and both of these climbs were more than 750 meters apiece.

“Fortunately for me this is my type of course,” added the men’s second place finisher Dereck Treadwell (Laurens, N.Y.), who was clocked in 4:22:22.56. “I do pretty well on the climbs and I seemed to handle the uphills here pretty well, I think it’s because of my running and triathlon background.”

Philip Wong (Male Gloucester, N.J.) rounded out the men’s top-three finishers when he crossed the finish line in 4:25:11.26. Crystal Anthony (Beverly, Mass.) was second in the women’s event, while Carmen Sweet (Oshawa, Ontario) was third. Anthony crossed the finish line, at the base of Whiteface Mountain, in 5:21:59.64, while Sweet was clocked in 5:32:59.83.

In only his third-ever mountain bike race, 2010 Olympic Nordic Combined champion Bill Demong (Vermontville, N.Y.) finished fifth overall. Demong, whose first career mountain bike race was the LT100 last year, where he was 34th, finished in 4:42:32.67.

“That was brutal,” he said afterward. “Coming down Whiteface, I was saying I’m going to be happy when this is over. I’m super psyched that I finished fifth.

“I was under the impression that this was a 62-mile long race and I learned only this morning that the race was actually closer to 70-miles that was a little shocking.”

Seventy of Sunday’s athletes are now making plans to race in the Aug. 11 LT100. Thirty-five of the LT100 qualifying spots were awarded based on performance in each division for men and women, and the other 35 were distributed randomly from a pool of all racers, who finished under the maximum cutoff time, which was eight hours. Since the LT100 lottery had already taken place, this was one of only six nationwide Leadville Series Races in which cyclists could still qualify and compete in the LT100.

For a complete list of results, log onto http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/page/show/341303-results. For more information about the Wilmington/Whiteface 100K, visit, http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/page/show/431652-wilmington-whiteface-100.