After two heartbreaks, Bharat completes the Race Across America at the third attempt — and takes the Armed Forces Cup.
Menon's dispatch follows Bharat across the finish line of the 2024 Race Across America — the goal he had chased since 2017. His first attempt, in 2019, ended before it began with a broken collarbone; his second, in 2022, unravelled on the tenth day when fever forced his crew to pull him out. In between came the Virtual RAAM podium of 2020 and the two Guinness World Records on the Golden Quadrilateral and the Manali–Leh highway.
This time the roughly 4,900 km route from Oceanside, California to the East Coast fell inside the twelve-day cut-off. Bharat finished in 11 days, 23 hours and 36 minutes — including a one-hour traffic penalty — and won the Armed Forces Cup as the fastest racer from any nation's armed forces. Sleep deprivation and the Kansas crosswinds tested him through the closing days, and he already talks of going back to better the time.
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