BENTONVILLE — Tobias Mørch Kongstad (PAS Racing) surged from a nine-rider sprint to win the Life Time 2026 Big Sugar Classic gravel race on Saturday in Bentonville, Arkansas, completing the 101.4-mile course in 4:36:03. The Dane, third at this year's Unbound Gravel 200, finished ahead of Life Time Grand Prix contenders Mārtiņš Blūms (Velo Express) in second and Cole Paton (Giant-RCC) in third in the sixth and final event of the Life Time Grand Prix series.
"I just tried my best in the sprint, and sometimes your best is enough. And yeah, it was good," Kongstad told organisers at the finish. He had led much of the first half with Hayden Christian (Trek Driftless-MAAP) after the pair escaped with John Borstelmann (Ventum), who later stopped with a mechanical. "I'm just lucky that my competitors still allow me to go into breakaway. I got caught at the bottom of a super steep climb out there, and that was not the best. But I tried to manage my effort before I got caught, so I was not fully cooked," he said. "So from there on, I think I played a technical game, saying to guys, 'Hey guys, I've been in breakaway all day. I cannot pull'. Luckily, I convinced them. Sometimes you just need to play your cards right."
Blūms, the top Grand Prix finisher on the day, admitted he went off course early and had to chase back with Simon Pellaud (Cervelo-Assos-Maxxis) after Pellaud suffered a flat. "I was with Pellaud way back behind the big bunch because he got a flat. I took the wrong turn. I had to turn back, and we didn't see the front group, so I had no clue what's happening in the front at all. We catched the front just before the first aid station. So we burned matches quite a lot to get there," he told Life Time livestream cameras. "I was just trying to recover. I was struggling a lot at some point, but yeah, somehow I got in the rhythm."
Cole Davis (SpeedStudio-Basso) finished one second back in fourth, while Grand Prix contenders filled the next four places with Matt Wilson (Scott Sports USA) fifth, Drew Dillman sixth, Brendan Johnston (Giant) seventh and Andreas Seewald (Singer KTM Racing) eighth. Henry Nelson (Lunchbox Racing) was ninth, five seconds down, after launching a solo attack with eight miles to go that was reeled in on the run past the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art into downtown Bentonville. Overall Grand Prix leader Keegan Swenson (Specialized Off-road) suffered an early mechanical and wheel swap, finishing 3:41 off the pace in 24th overall, but his 13th place in the Grand Prix standings was expected to be enough to retain the series title.
Kongstad was caught on a 24% gradient with 23 miles to go and rejoined a lead group that swelled to 12 riders inside the final 15 miles before the decisive sprint. The early break had held more than a minute with 62 miles to go and still led by 40 seconds approaching the final checkpoint near Washburn, Missouri, before the chasers merged on the fast, dusty doubletrack back into Arkansas.