# Australians run 80 hours in race with no finish line

> Fifteen Australians competed in the Backyard Ultra World Team Championship, a gruelling event where runners complete a 6.7-kilometre loop every hour until only one remains.
- Title: Australians run 80 hours in race with no finish line · Abc
- Summary: Fifteen Australians competed in the Backyard Ultra World Team Championship, a gruelling event where runners complete a 6.7-kilometre loop every hour until…
- Keywords: backyard ultra, world team championship, kembla grange, endurance running, australia, dan camac, jonathan ash, brandon lee gretch, news, politics, Australians, run
- Source: Abc — https://abc.net.au/news/2026-10-21/backyard-ultra-world-team-championship-kembla-gorge-running/107283546
- Published: 2026-10-21T01:28:16+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: backyard ultra, world team championship, kembla grange, endurance running, australia, dan camac, jonathan ash, brandon lee gretch, news, politics
## A race with no finish line
About nine hundred runners from sixty-seven nations, including fifteen Australians, started the Backyard Ultra World Team Championship at eleven pm on Saturday at Kembla Grange in New South Wales Illawarra.
## How the race works
Each athlete completes a six point seven kilometre course loop on the hour, every hour, until one runner remains.
## Jonathan Ash's painful exit
Jonathan Ash was the first Australian to pull out on Monday afternoon after exceeding the hour limit on his forty-first lap.

> Basically every muscle in my body started to get knotted at some point.
## Australia's endurance record
Jonathan Ash, forty-three, is the second-ever Australian to complete one hundred laps, equal to six hundred seventy kilometres, over four days in two thousand twenty-four.
## Brandon Lee Gretch's personal best
Melbourne's Brandon Lee Gretch tapped out after lap seventy-three about midnight on Wednesday. The thirty-two-year-old said he was proud of his effort, having achieved a personal best despite pain down his back from about yard…

> It was hell.
## The origins of Backyard Ultra
Backyard ultras were invented fifteen years ago by Gary Lazarus Lake Cantrell and hosted at his Bell Buckle property in Tennessee.
## Two Australians remain
All but one Australian runner ran more than sixty kilometres, but only two passed the eighty kilometre mark.
## The final push
Dan Camac and Ben Nicholls were hoping to reach one hundred hours, which would be Thursday morning.

> When there is only two left, they really need to work together.
## Dan Camac finishes for Australia
Dan Camac was the last Australian left standing, completing the eighty-seventh lap. The Australian team finished the event with a combined one thousand sixty-nine laps.
## Key takeaway

Fifteen Australians competed in the Backyard Ultra World Team Championship at Kembla Grange, with Dan Camac completing eighty-seven laps before the Australian team finished with a combined one thousand sixty-nine laps.