Mike Hall

Michael Richard Hall (4 June 1981 – 31 March 2017), better known as simply Mike Hall, was a British cyclist and race organiser who specialised in self-supported ultra-distance cycling races. In 2012, he won the inaugural World Cycle Race. In 2013 and 2016, he won the Tour Divide ultra-endurance mountain bike race across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States. In 2014, he won the inaugural Trans Am Bike Race, a road-based event from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast in the United States. From 2013, he was the principal organiser of the Transcontinental Race, an event similar to the TransAm Bicycle Race, but that traverses Europe.Hall died after being struck by a car, just south of Canberra, during the inaugural Indian Pacific Wheel Race across Australia, on 31 March 2017, after covering just over 5,000km of the 5,500km distance.

I first meet Mike Hall in London at the beginning of the 2nd World Cycle race in 2014. And although I had no idea who he was and new nothing about Ultra cycling he immediately made me feel at ease. This all Changed later that year when I became part of the Transcontinental race. A self supported race from london to Istanbul. I was bitten by the bug of long distance cycling and in 2016 I organised the first TransAtlanticWay Bike race inspired by Mike Hall. In 2017 Mike was down to ride in Ireland in the TransAtlanticWay a race I know he’d have loved. So in Memory of Mike his love of hills and how he was the inspiration for the TransAtlanticWay we decided to create the Mike Hall King of the Mountains challenge.