Lachlan Morton admitted that a new attempt at the Everest summit record is needed. The reason is that due to an error in altitude data, he failed to summit 8,848 meters, which is the equivalent of the altitude of Mount Everest.

The EF Pro Cycling rider appeared to have set a new record of 7 hours, 32 minutes, and 54 seconds on Saturday after a carefully researched climb up the short but steep List Canyon in Colorado. He ran the 1.9-km, 11% climb 42 times, beating American mountain biker Keegan Swenson by about 7 minutes.

However, despite the initial official approval of the record, further investigation by Everest officials revealed that Morton's attempt did not reach the required altitude.

Morton's Strava file indicated that he had climbed 8,509 meters, which was initially explained as a "data lag in elevation." However, a detailed investigation by the Canadian Cycling Magazine website and the Hells 500, an organization that verifies Everest challenges, revealed serious problems with the accuracy of the elevation for this section, undermining Morton's data and record attempt.

"Further digging into his Strava data revealed that he actually gained only about 203 meters per climb (not the 213 meters listed for the Strava section); multiply 203 x 42 = 8526 meters, which is close to the value reported by Garmin." Canadian Cycling Magazine writes.

"Discrepancies between devices are common, and it is possible that Morton's Garmin 1030 is malfunctioning and reporting a lower elevation. Nevertheless, looking at other ride files this month from people who have climbed the same ascent, his reading does not appear to be an outlier."

Canadian Cycling Magazine compared several other rides up List Canyon.

"From the above data and the OpenTopography contours, ' Back Side of Rist' appears to actually climb only 190m-200m. This would put Lachlan Morton far short of the height of Everest. Even if his Garmin's 203m gain/lap was accurate, he would have had to do 43.5 laps (instead of 42)," they concluded.

This difference would not have allowed Morton to reach the altitude of Everest by 450m. The Hells 500 confirmed on their Facebook page that Morton's ride did not reach the threshold as an Everest attempt. Swenson's attempt appears to stand up to scrutiny.

"As painful as it is, we support the community's decision to reclassify this as a (very large) Everest Base Camp list, meaning that Keegan Swenson will return to the top of the Everest Leaderboard," the organization wrote, adding that going forward the data It explained that the record attempt procedure will be changed by pre-approving the Strava segments rather than analyzing them retroactively.

Canadian Cycling suggested that in order to challenge the record, the Strava segment data would need to be verified on a secondary device to verify the elevation gain, and that the data from the cycle computer head unit and the Strava data were inaccurate. He suggested that it is possible that the data from the head unit of the cycle computer or from Strava may be inaccurate.

"One thing we never anticipated when we created this challenge for our crew was that one day this challenge would be raced by some of the top riders in the sport. In fact, ironically, the Challenge was set up as the antithesis of racing,"

"It's a great challenge," said Herr 500, "but it's also a great challenge.

"Nevertheless, while finishing the race is the driving force for the majority of participants, we appreciate and respect that the appeal of setting a new Everest summit record has clearly taken hold.

"Rather than retroactively applying additional rigor to our approval process after a new record has been claimed, we feel that a fairer way is to pre-approve segments for record attempts. Since the accuracy of map data varies from country to country (indeed, the exact height of Everest itself is still debatable), we will - to the extent possible with the resources at hand - agree on a set elevation gain prior to the challenge. "

"Unfortunately, if Lachlan had had an independent segment analysis in hand beforehand, we will never know how things could have been different.

Morton said on Instagram that he checked the segment with the Hells 500, but that he was ultimately responsible. He accepted that if he wanted the Everest record, he would have to take on a new challenge.