Broken Arrow Skyrace Ascent — M20-29: Papillon Holds Off a Close Chase

• Ali Papillon wins M20-29 in 41:46 (11:34/mi), edging Marshall Graybill by just 10 seconds.
• Bodhi Gross rounds out the podium in 43:13 — 1:17 back of Graybill but clear of the chase pack behind him.
• The top-5 gap spans only 3:09, from Papillon's 41:46 to Tyler Scholl's 44:55, making for a tightly contested field at the front.
• Quinton Burden (Phoenix, AZ) and Jonathan Fookes (San Francisco, CA) faced the steepest acclimatization challenge among the top 20, coming from sea-level cities to a course that sits between 6,257 and 8,845 feet.

Ali Papillon — 21 years old, racing on home turf in South Lake Tahoe — took the M20-29 title in 41:46, averaging 11:34 per mile across a course that climbs through thin mountain air. That local familiarity may well have mattered: knowing when to push and when to manage effort on high-altitude terrain is a real advantage, even on a cool, overcast morning with light winds keeping conditions as favorable as this course gets.

Marshall Graybill made him earn it. The Boulder-based 27-year-old finished in 41:56 — just 10 seconds behind — and actually posted the 16th-fastest split on the KT 22-to-finish segment compared to Papillon's 19th, meaning Graybill was closing on that final stretch. He simply ran out of course. Bodhi Gross, another South Lake Tahoe local, came home third in 43:13, and his 25th-fastest closing split suggests a solid, controlled effort rather than a late fade.

Peter Wolter and Tyler Scholl filled out the top five in 44:49 and 44:55 respectively, separated by just six seconds. Wolter actually gained four spots on the closing segment — moving from 40th to 36th among the women's field — suggesting he found something late, though it wasn't quite enough to shake Scholl. Behind them, Dante Capone (6th, 45:24) and Reid Goble (7th, 46:15) kept things competitive through the top ten, with only about four and a half minutes separating 1st through 10th in a 43-finisher field.