U.S. Cyclocross Nationals Superlatives: Winners and Podium Finishers Since 1975 – Updated

Growing up, I was really into baseball, which is a sport where numbers and milestones are often revered. Accomplishments such as Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in a season, Cy Young’s 511 career wins and Ted Williams’ 0.406 batting average in 1941 took on a greater meaning, even though they were just … numbers.

In cyclocross, numbers of distinction are a bit harder to come by. Courses and fast times change each year and there are not specialized stats like most tailwhips dropped or bunny hops converted. Given the importance of Nationals and Worlds in ’cross, one way of defining excellence is most wins and podium appearances at those two revered races.

Katie Compton knows a thing or two about U.S. Nationals excellence. 2018 Cyclocross National Championships. © A. Yee / Cyclocross Magazine

Last year when I interviewed Jeremy Powers before Hartford Nationals I asked him, with four Nationals titles to his name, if getting number five and tying the male record was important to him. His response was, “Who has won five? I’m curious. Who has won five? It’s not a modern rider because I’ve never heard of anyone winning five. I don’t know who’s won five.”

Needless to say, I was surprised! If I were an athlete with four Nationals wins, I would probably want to get number five and at least tie the mark.

For the record, the current record for the men belongs to Laurence Malone, who won five straight titles from 1975 to 1979. His 5, of course, put him third all-time behind Katie Compton with 14 and Alison Dunlap with 6.

After my interview with Powers, I became interested in learning more about U.S. Cyclocross Nationals superlatives. Using the power of the internet — while trying to avoid going too far down the rabbit hole — I found three resources to help me out. The U.S. Nationals Wikipedia page has decent results for the last two decades or so, this compilation is impressive and then a site called the-sports.org has a fairly comprehensive collection of podium finishers. Some results for the full Women’s podiums from 1986 to 1991 are still missing.

A conversation with Jeremy Powers provided inspiration for this project. 2016 U.S. Cyclocross Nationals © Brian Nelson

Elite Nationals wins and podiums can define cyclocross superlatives. The table and accompanying discussion below summarize the accomplishments of the 26 men and women who have won Elite U.S. Cyclocross Nationals and the 75 (unofficially) who have finished on an Elite Nationals podium. Full tables of Elite U.S. Nationals podiums are at the bottom of this post.

Many of these riders also have National Championships and podiums to their names in younger categories, so we might tackle U23 and Junior podiums another day.

The Pantheon of Champions

The conversation about U.S. champions begins and ends with Katie Compton. In fact, if numbers are relevant in cyclocross, it is probably because we cannot help but gawk at Compton’s 14 straight Nationals wins. When Compton first won Nationals, Barack Obama was a just-elected Senator from Illinois, the Dow Jones was around 10,500 and Facebook was still called TheFacebook.

In a sport where racers describe mechanicals and crashes as “all in the game,” Compton’s string of success is that much more impressive.

U.S. Cyclocross Nationals Multiple-Time Winners

When Compton won her first Nationals in 2004, she faced what seemed like an insurmountable record at the time. Alison Dunlap won five straight Nationals from 1997 to 2001 and six overall. Compton won her sixth in 2009 and then took hold of the record in 2010. Since then, she has doubled that mark.

Alison Dunlap won U.S. Cyclocross Nationals six times. © Cyclocross Magazine

With years of dominance by Compton and Dunlap, the men are left battling for the third spot on the U.S. cyclocross superlatives podium. When the first officially sanctioned Nationals were held in 1975, Laurence Malone wasted no time in setting a record for his fellow cyclocrossers to aspire to. Malone won five-straight titles from 1975 to 1979 and still holds the record for the men.

Laurence Malone won five U.S. national championships. © Cyclocross Magazine

The — magic  or perhaps tragic — number for the sport’s top men is four. Four riders have four wins. Don Myrah won four times in the 1980s and 90s; Jonathan Page won three-straight from 2002 to 2004 and then another a decade later in 2013, and Jeremy Powers won the 2012 and 2014 to 2016 races. Page’s second behind Powers in 2015 in Austin and Powers’ second behind Stephen Hyde last month in Reno were both men’s shots at the elusive fifth title.

But for a flat at the 2015 Cyclocross National Championships, Jonathan Page may have gotten his male record-tying fifth Nationals win. © Cyclocross Magazine

There have been a total of eight women who have won U.S. Cyclocross Nationals through 2018. With 14 wins, Katie Compton has won nearly half (40%) of the U.S. Nationals raced from 1975 to 1977 and 1986 to the present. Dunlap has six titles, and Elizabeth Muhich is the other women to win Nationals at least three times.

Eighteen different men have won U.S. Nationals since 1975. In addition to Malone and the three with four, Clark Natwick, Tim Johnson and Todd Wells have three titles. When Stephen Hyde lines up this December in Louisville, he will be chasing not only his third-straight title but also a spot in a very select group of excellence with 1 other athletes.

Stephen Hyde is chasing Nationals wins and his legacy. Elite Men, 2018 Cyclocross National Championships. © J. Vander Stucken / Cyclocross Magazine

Consistency and Tough Luck Podiums

Landing on a cyclocross podium at Nationals is an accomplishment worth celebrating; placing in the top three among your peers in the sport is hard to do! Podium finishes can be moments of triumph, as we saw when Michael Vanthourenhout celebrated finishing second at the 2018 World Championships, but they can also signify near misses or just plain bad luck.

U.S. Cyclocross Nationals: Four or More Podium Finishes

Not surprisingly, Katie Compton and Alison Dunlap have left a several excellent women racers in the “tough luck” category. The two most affected by the duo’s shared dominance are Rachel Lloyd and Ann Knapp (Grande). Both Lloyd and Knapp have the distinction of finishing second behind both Dunlap and Compton.

Rachel Lloyd has seven U.S. Nationals podium finishes to her name. © Mike Albright

Knapp finished second behind Dunlap three straight years from 1998 to 2000 before getting her revenge in 2002 and ending Dunlap’s five-year winning streak. Second place in 2002? Rachel Lloyd. Dunlap won once more in 2003 and then Knapp finished second in 2005 when Compton won her second title.

Lloyd reached seven Nationals podiums and Knapp six during their respective careers. Lloyd’s run is notable for its longevity. She finished third in 2000 and then got her seventh podium finish with a third in Austin in 2015. Rachel Lloyd finally got to see the Stars-and-Stripes jersey on a Lloyd when her sister Monica won the Masters 40-44 race in Reno last month.

Another member of the Katie Compton Tough Luck Club? Georgia Gould. Gould finished second behind Compton four times! Which is, fittingly, the same number of times Compton has finished second at the World Championships, so Compton can empathize with her fellow silver medalist.

Georgia Gould finished second behind Katie Compton four times. © Cyclocross Magazine

The newest member of the KFC TLC is Kaitie Keough, who finished second in 2012 and 2015 and has finished third each of the last three years.

The top two spots in the U.S. podium pantheon are pretty easy to figure out. First is Compton, duh, and second is the recently retired Jonathan Page with 12. Page’s only podium misses between 2002 to 2015 were 2010 in Bend and 2014 in Boulder. His competitors during that era included fellow four-time winner Powers, three-time winners Tim Johnson and Todd Wells and two-time winner Ryan Trebon.

The third spot goes to a male rider who can feel the pain of the KFC TLC members. Ryan Trebon won Nationals in 2006 and 2008, but finished second a whopping six times! All told, he has nine U.S. Nationals podiums to his name. From 2004 to 2014, Trebon finished 1st or 2nd 8 of the 11 years. The riders who beat Trebon? The murderer’s row of Page, Wells, Powers and Johnson.

Ryan Trebon finished second at Nationals six times. 2014 U.S. Cyclocross National Championships © Matt Lasala

Next up behind Trebon are Clark Natwick and Don Myrah with eight podiums each. The two share seven Nationals wins and another seven Nationals silver medals.

Second or third-place finishes do not necessarily signify near misses; often gaps in cyclocross races are large, but given the “all in the game” nature of cyclocross, they can show how if things were a little different on a given day, the shape of the U.S. cyclocross record book could be different.

U.S. Cyclocross Nationals Podiums

The full history of Elite U.S. Cyclocross Nationals podiums since 1975, based on available information, is below.

Jan Wiejak taking the win in a snow storm at the 1995 Cyclocross National Championships in Leicester, Mass. © A. Yee

If there are any errors or if you have info on some of the missing podium positions please let us know at news [at] cxmagazine.com.

Updated: Podium finishers.

Women's U.S. Nationals Podiums: 1975-1978, 1986-2018

Men's U.S. Nationals Podiums: 1975-2018