The wait is over.
On October 17, backyard runners around the world will start the same 4.167-mile yard, and they will keep coming back every hour until national teams begin disappearing. The 2026 Backyard Ultra World Team Championship is here.
Garrett and Tanner have spent the last month talking with Team USA runners, studying the international rosters, following the qualifying races and trying to figure out what happens when 15-person teams around the world compete for every possible yard.
Now it’s time to make the calls.
We break down all 15 members of Team USA, from Jeff Walker and Nicholas Steel through Mark Dowdle, Jon Noll and captain Harvey Lewis. We look at what each runner has done, where there may still be untapped upside, who we trust when the race reaches the third and fourth nights, and then put an actual yard prediction next to every name.
And we’re not playing it safe.
Garrett predicts Team USA will score 1,228 yards. Tanner has them at 1,202. Both would break Belgium’s championship-record 1,147 yards from 2024, and both of us are picking the United States to win the world title.
The conversation also covers:
Why Mark Dowdle, Jon Noll and Harvey Lewis could become the backbone of Team USA late in the race, and why the version of Dowdle we see in Bell Buckle may look very different from the showman we’ve watched elsewhere
Our biggest Team USA swings, including Tanner calling 102 yards for Nicholas Steel, Garrett calling 92 for Nick Petterson and 90 for Megan Smyth, and both of us wondering if we may have underestimated Harvey Lewis before the episode was even over
Belgium’s terrifying depth, Ivo Steyaert, Merijn Geerts and Brecht Van Damme, and how the defending champions could produce some of the highest individual yard counts in the world and still lose the team title
The international teams that could reshape the championship, including Japan’s extraordinary consistency, an Australian team trying to replace the yards Phil Gore would have provided, a UK roster Garrett believes could make a massive jump, and an AIN team carrying one of the strangest and most fascinating storylines of the entire event
Whether the enormous Biotropika performances translate when those runners compete under the official World Team Championship structure, and why their results could answer questions the backyard world has been arguing about for months
Our final calls for the world’s highest individual yardage, biggest surprise, biggest underperformer, team sleeper and the bold predictions that could either make us look brilliant or give the rest of the backyard world clips to use against us for years
There is also something bigger happening around this race.
The backyard has grown quickly enough that countries are building deeper teams, international rivalries are becoming real, live streams are putting more eyes on every yard and every decision, and runners who once existed in separate corners of the sport are suddenly competing inside the same global event.
This is the event we built the last month of The Threshold Podcast around.
Now there is nothing left to research.
It’s time to run.
If you want to know who can win the 2026 Backyard Ultra World Team Championship, which runners could explode past their previous bests and what to watch when the yards start piling up around the world, you’re in the right place.
Links
2026 Backyard Ultra World Team Championship
https://bigsbackyardultra.com/
Official 2026 World Team Championship rosters
https://bigsbackyardultra.com/world-team-championship-2026/
Team USA World Team Championship page
https://bigsbackyardultra.com/races/big-dogs-satellite-championships-team-usa/
Road to Big’s
https://bigsbackyardultra.com/road-to-bigs/
Backyard Ultra World Rankings
https://bigsbackyardultra.com/world-rankings/
#BackyardUltra #TeamUSA #BigsBackyardUltra
