September 19, 2026 · St Ives Showground, Australia

Sydney's Backyard
Ultra 2026

6.7056km loop · Last one standing wins · Start: 8 am

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Winner

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Winning loops

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Winning distance

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Runners

Sydney's Backyard Ultra 2026 results, held September 19 at St Ives Showground in Sydney, Australia. Six hundred and thirty-one runners started at 8 am on a 6.7056km loop, one lap every hour until only one runner remained. Justin Makhlouf outlasted the field, completing 66 loops and covering 442.6 km. Below are the full results, lap pacing, and DNF breakdown.

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Three hundred and forty-eight gone before the first night

Six hundred and thirty-one runners started at eight on Saturday morning. Three hundred and forty-eight of them completed 12 loops or fewer, done by eight that evening, all of it in daylight.

The single biggest hour of the whole race came that night: 98 runners completed loop 15 and did not go back out for loop 16.

By six on Sunday morning, 565 of the 631 starters were done. Sixty-six were still going.

The middle of the field thinned out from there:

Thirty runners completed 30 loops or more.
Eleven completed 36 or more.
Five completed 40 or more.

Day vs night loops

Day One took more runners than Night One.

348 stopped before the first sunset. 217 stopped during the first night.

That held for the whole race. 408 runners DNF on a daylight loop, whereas only 222 stopped on a night loop. Day loops took almost twice as many runners as night loops.

But there were almost twice as many daylight hours too. The race ran 43 hours of daylight and 23 hours of night before Makhlouf won.

Spread the stops across those hours and day and night come out close to even: about 9.5 runners an hour in daylight, about 9.7 an hour at night.

The same familiar loops took the most runners

Four loops took far more runners than the loops next to them. Each one lines up with a distance every runner already knows.

60 stopped after loop 7. That's 46.9 km, just past a marathon.
52 stopped after loop 12. That's 80.5 km, almost exactly 50 miles.
98 stopped after loop 15. That's the biggest single exit of the whole race. It's 100.6 km, just past 100 km.
17 stopped after loop 24. That's 160.9 km, almost exactly 100 miles. Now, 17 may not sound like a lot, but only 64 runners were still racing at that point. That means more than one in four of them stopped right there.

How the top 2 paced

From loop 60 on, the race for the win was a two-runner contest between Justin Makhlouf and Lee Warren.

For five loops in a row, 58 through 62, they finished within two seconds of each other every single time. In other words, they ran together.

Loop 63 split them. Makhlouf ran 45:25. Warren ran 52:33, seven minutes and eight seconds slower.

Warren never closed the gap back up. He ran 54:59 on loop 64 and 55:21 on loop 65, his slowest loop of the race. He started loop 66 and did not finish it in time.

Makhlouf ran loop 66 alone, in 47:21, and won with 66 loops and 442.6 km.

Across the race, Makhlouf banked 11 hours 47 minutes of rest. Warren banked 10 hours 24 minutes.

Behind the leaders

Rhys Comley finished third with 59 loops, 395.6 km. Josh Graham was fourth with 51 loops. Chris Gulumian, racing under an Armenian flag, was fifth with 40 loops.

Kim Lueck was the top woman, finishing 37 loops for 7th place overall, the best result among the 107 women in the 631-runner field.

Final Standings

All 631 starters · loops, distance and time on course