Montana
Tom Pidcock in impressive comeback at Crans Montana Short Track World Cup, Puck Pieterse claims women’s victory – Eurosport
Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) came back from last place at the beginning of the Men’s Elite UCI Cross-country Short Track (XCC) World Cup race before claiming victory, while Puck Pieterse also triumphed.
Knee problems consigned world champion Sam Gaze (Alpecin-Deceuninck) to 36th out of 37 finishers and prevented him from closing in on overall leader Victor Koretzky (Specialized Factory Racing), who missed the round due to illness and injury.
In a pulsating Women’s Elite race, Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck) enjoyed only a slightly more straightforward afternoon as she distanced the favourites with a ferocious attack on the final lap to win a second consecutive XCC round.
PIDCOCK OVERTURNS 23-SECOND MARGIN FOR STATEMENT WIN
On his final weekend of mountain biking before heading south to the Grand Depart of the Tour de France, then defending his Olympic title in Paris, Pidcock showed he will be a force to be reckoned with on all fronts with a scarcely believable comeback from worst to first.
The Ineos Grenadiers man slipped a pedal after starting on the second row and sunk through the field like a stone, then collided with a rival as he attempted to recover on the descent.
‘Didn’t make it easy’ – Pidcock revels in Short Track victory in Crans-Montana
Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM MTB Racing) led the field across the line to start the second of six laps after a merciless first circuit that saw a four-wide bunch sprint up the opening climb in the battle to lead into the technical descent.
Gaze was the holeshot but quickly lost touch with the leaders with eventual fourth-placed finisher Christopher Blevins (Specialized Factory Racing) later admitting they “shot themselves in the foot” by going too quickly from the off.
A whopping 23 seconds ahead of Pidcock after the first lap, Schurter briefly broke away with Luca Schwarzbauer (Canyon CLLCTV) but the pair could not make the move stick as a washing machine effect at the front also saw Blevins and Thomas Litscher (Lapierre Mavic Unity) kick on to no avail.
However, a lull on the third and fourth laps allowed the Olympic champion to fight his way back and he dragged a rested bunch with him when he finally made contact, quickly ascending to the podium positions alongside Schwarzbauer and Schurter.
Finally making his first attack from the front at the start of the penultimate lap, only the Scott-SRAM pair of Schurter and Filippo Colombo could live with Pidcock’s pace initially, before Charlie Aldridge (Cannondale Factory Racing) joined the party and made it a British one-two to start the final circuit.
The national champion was a spent force, and the most patient man on the course got his reward at last with Julian Schelb (Stop&Go Marderabwehr MTB Team) punching past Aldridge, Schwarzbauer and the tiring Swiss riders to slot into a second place that he would never relinquish.
The fastest down the last descent, the German was even visibly closing on the win but left it too late to make the difference as Pidcock could post up before the line and celebrate what seemed like the unlikeliest of victories in the opening minute of racing – less than a week after he was sixth in the Tour de Suisse general classification.
“I didn’t make it easy, that’s for sure,” Pidcock said. “At the start I unclipped then I was at the back, and I was actually getting dropped on that first climb, they were going so fast.
“Coming from a week-long stage race it’s something a little bit different but I was just riding it full, just to pick off riders every time on the climb and it was just my tactic, just ride full gas.
“Going into the descent if you’ve got riders in front, you can only lose time so I was trying to time it right so I could make up time on the descents.
“I got there and I was suffering and I looked around and no one was pulling faces so I thought ‘Oh God, these guys have had it easy’ but I just carried on and obviously they were suffering.”
Gaze lined up at the start with heavy strapping on his knee and his paltry return means a three-figure deficit remains to Koretzky at the top of the UCI Cross-country Short Track World Cup tree.
Schwarzbauer was one of the main protagonists in the early part of the race but faded at the death meaning Blevins jumps up to third in an exciting battle for the final place on the overall podium – just 142 points separate the American from ninth-placed Jordan Sarrou (Team BMC)
UNSTOPPABLE PIETERSE SURGES TO SECOND SUCCESSIVE WIN
Chiara Teocchi (Orbea Factory Team) hit the front early in the Women’s Elite XCC race with Pieterse distanced before recovering that ground in the first descent. The race-winning selection was made almost immediately with Loana Lecomte (Canyon CLLCTV) and Alessandra Keller (Thomus Maxon) completing a lead quartet after Lotte Koopmans (KMC Ridley MTB Racing) lost control on the brutally steep Red Bull Roots and Rolls section and speared straight into the netting at the corner.
And there was barely a moment’s rest from there in a race full of haymakers in the lead group, Lecomte landing the first (albeit glancing) blow when she gapped the rest on the second lap but failed to make the move stick.
Teochchi was shaken loose but the Orbea Factory green continued to light up the front of the race as Anne Tauber bridged across followed shortly by Gwendalyn Gibson (Trek Factory Racing – Pirelli), in a hugely encouraging showing after the American broke her collarbone in Mairipora (Brazil) at the start of the season and only returned to racing last time out in Nove Mesto Na Morave.
Pieterse had been an ever-present at the front but was not able to make it pay as five riders took the bell, with Tauber the first to make her move entering the long drag at the start of the lap. It was a brave effort and one that distanced all but her compatriot, who immediately hit the front and crested the top of the climb with a three-second lead.
Pieterse’s descent was not the smoothest as she dropped a couple of seconds losing the back end momentarily, but the lead she had fought so hard to establish meant she had time to celebrate before crossing the line – though promptly collapsing into a fetal position on the Swiss tarmac.
But ironically for someone who gave a fisherwoman celebration at the finish, no one else had a chance at reeling Pieterse in. She spent her energy at the perfect moment to dance away from the field with a victory margin of four seconds.
“It was very tactical, every time especially on the last part of the climb, we went all in then on the descents it stayed quite together and on the road it was just looking at each other,” Pieterse said.
“I knew they’d have to push really hard to come back every time, and we saved the energy for the climb. Luckily, I could profit off Anna’s attack a bit, I had the feeling I maybe wasn’t the fastest in the descent, I didn’t want to take any big risks.
“Let’s hope for such good legs tomorrow.”
Keller won the sprint behind to strengthen her position in the overall standings, while Tauber was overjoyed to secure a podium finish – having put a few bike lengths into Lecomte on the run to the line.
Teocchi paid for her early efforts, plummeting down the field in the final couple of laps to eventually finish 24th – three places ahead of Haley Batten (Specialized Factory Racing) who entered the weekend sat second in the overall rankings.
Batten was predicted to flourish on the testing course but never featured in the fight at the front, instead dropping further and further back and ceding the runner-up position to Pieterse, who now enjoys a 260-point advantage at the top.
LATE MOVES MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN UCI U23 UCI XCC WORLD CUP
Women’s U23 UCI XCC World Cup leader Kira Bohm (Cube Factory Racing) crashed early in Friday’s race allowing Emilly Johnston (Trek Future Racing) to close the overall gap to just 26 points with a solo victory.
Johnston broke away early with Carla Hahn (Lexware Mountainbike Team) and Madigan Munro (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) and though she shook the American early, Hahn matched every acceleration entering the penultimate lap.
“I knew that in the sprint she would get me nine times out of ten,” Johnston explained. “So I had to be away before then. I just gave it the beans up the climb.”
And that she did, eventually distancing her rival to win by five seconds with Bohm trailing home ninth, admitting her injuries sustained in the crash had handicapped her fightback.
Riley Amos (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) revealed his victory in the Men’s U23 XCC race was his hardest of the season, as the runaway series leader made it eight wins from nine after breaking clear on the final lap.
Pieterse dominates for Short Track win in Crans-Montana
Amos was made to work for it, with several attacks failing to dislodge his rivals before he threw everything at the long road climb on the final lap. He finally made it count though, crossing the line two seconds ahead of Bjorn Riley (Trek Future Racing) with Luca Martin (Orbea Factory Team) in third.
Amos said: “It kept coming back together on the finish, but then with two laps to go I put in a hard dig, because I didn’t like how many of us were together. That split us into three or four.
“I just went for it completely. I told myself I couldn’t drop a gear and just held the gear to the top and it was enough.”
The UCI Cross-Country Olympic World Cup returns on Sunday to round out the Crans-Montana weekend with the Men’s and Women’s Elite races plus the Women’s U23 field taking to the trails, in the penultimate round before competitors take on Les Gets (Haute-Savoie, France) and then catch the TGV to Paris and the Olympics.
Montana
Montana Lottery Big Sky Bonus results for April 19, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at April 19, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from April 19 drawing
05-13-15-17, Bonus: 01
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Montana
Rural Highway Stalker In White Pickup With Dark Windows Terrifying Montana Women
The Ole’ Mercantile is a busy place by Grass Range, Montana, standards.
The community of roughly 125 people sits along a long, lonely network of two-lane highways connecting Billings with points north along Montana’s Hi-Line.
For drivers pushing toward Lewistown, Malta or Glasgow, the store’s lights are often the first sign of anything for miles.
Of late, they may also offer a chance of identifying the person driving a truck local women say is stalking these roads.
Owner Krista Manley told Cowboy State Daily her store is outfitted with a top-of-the-line camera system that offers a 360-degree view with no blind spots. Four overlapping cameras capture her property, the Wrangler Bar and the full stretch of Highway 87 frontage running through town.
Fergus County investigators now hope that footage — and Manley’s willingness to comb through hours of it — can help identify the driver of a newer white Ford four-door pickup with dark tinted windows, no front license plate and a chrome grill guard.
The truck is at the center of the most recent reported highway stalking incident.
Lizette Lamb, a 48-year-old traveling health care worker, says she was nearly run off the road the evening of April 10.
Now a growing chorus of similar accounts from women across north-central Montana are popping up on social media.
At The Ole Merc
Travis Lamb, Lizette’s husband, took to Facebook to post about what happened to his wife on one of the loneliest stretches of highway in Montana.
Travis told Cowboy State Daily Lizette pulled into the Ole’ Merc Conoco in Grass Range between 7 and 8 p.m. to grab a drink. She later remembered a pickup was backed in alongside the cafe: a newer white Ford four-door.
“Kind of gave her the heebie-jeebies,” he said. “My wife has worked in a prison and stuff like that, so she’s used to kind of going with her gut.”
She bought a drink, got back in her Ford Bronco Sport and headed north on Highway 19 toward Glasgow.
About a mile and a half down the road, she realized the white pickup was behind her. Through the dark tint, she could make out the silhouettes of two men.
She slowed down and edged toward the shoulder to let them pass. They slowed with her. She sped up. They sped up.
By the time she reached Bohemian Corner 23 miles up the road, Travis Lamb said, his wife knew something was wrong.
There were no other vehicles in the lot, so she didn’t bother pulling in. She tried to call Travis. No service.
She tried 911. The phone beeped, displayed a red message and disconnected.
Truck Gets Aggressive
The white truck continued to shadow Lizette along Highway 191. About two miles from where the road crosses the Missouri River, coming into a construction zone, the pickup got aggressive.
Travis said the truck rode so close to the Bronco’s bumper that his wife could no longer see its windshield, only the grille.
Then it pulled out as if to pass and swerved into her, he said, in what he described as an attempted PIT maneuver — the law-enforcement technique of clipping a fleeing vehicle’s rear quarter to spin it out.
PIT stands for Precision Immobilization Technique, and this tactic is used to stop a fleeing vehicle by forcing it to turn sideways, causing the driver to lose control and stop.
“She was fortunate, kind of timed it to when they went to turn into her and hit her, she sped up,” Travis Lamb said. “And they missed.”
That’s when Lizette Lamb pulled her Springfield XDM 9mm pistol out of the center console. She didn’t point it, but she made sure they could see it.
The white pickup hit its brakes, threw a U-turn in a spray of dust and gravel, and headed back toward Grass Range.
The Video
“I thank God that it did happen to her and not somebody else, because I know my wife is more than capable of defending herself,” said Travis Lamb, an Iraq War combat veteran, who eventually reached out to Manley at the Ole Merc.
Then, when Manley reviewed the surveillance video from the Merc’s camera system, she found no sign of a white Ford truck.
“We have not found evidence of them at our store or at the three businesses that come along the highway right there,” Manley said. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
“My default is to absolutely believe women, and she (Lizette) was, she was rattled.”
Manley holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and ran the research team at Procore Technologies before going into business for herself.
When reviewing the video, Manley logged the times Lizette arrived and left, and then watched the highway for an hour after.
“We’re absolutely not arguing the authenticity of the report in any way, shape or form,” said Manley. “In my previous life before I had the store, I actually was a memory and cognition researcher. I understand how stress impacts memory.”
The Echoes
Travis Lamb’s Facebook post went off like a flare.
He tallied 36 accounts of similar experiences in roughly the same swath of country stretching across prairie and badlands in one of the least populated parts of Montana.
The pattern in many of the comments was consistent enough to be unsettling: a white pickup, often a Ford, sometimes with out-of-state plates, tailgating women on isolated stretches of two-lane after dark.
One commenter described being followed by a white truck north of Grass Range three years ago around 10 p.m., tailgated with brights on at more than 80 mph until the truck peeled off in a different direction.
Another described a white Ford pickup near Harlowton trying to force her to stop, then waiting for her at a gas station. Another recalled a white pickup with North Dakota plates in the same area.
In Wyoming, one poster described two men in a white truck with Washington plates on Highway 120 between Cody and Meeteetse who tailgated her, tried to push her off the road, then cut in front and slammed on the brakes.
Other women described different vehicles — a dark Escalade, a small white car, a black double-cab — but the same script: tailgating, refusing to pass, brake-checking, dead zones with no cell service.
Easter Night
One name in that Facebook thread was Joni Hartford of Lewistown, who told Cowboy State Daily she had her own near-identical encounter on Easter evening just days before Lizette Lamb’s.
Hartford, who works in insurance, had dropped off some belongings to her son, a football player at Rocky Mountain College in Billings.
She stopped at a gas station on her way out of town “for a pop,” climbed back into her red 2014 Ford F-150 and headed north on Highway 87 around 7:30 or 8 p.m.
“I noticed it right after I left Billings,” Hartford said of the pickup behind her. “It was right behind me and I kept thinking, ‘God, this vehicle is super close.’”
About 15 miles out of town, past the racetracks, she pulled toward the white line and slowed to 60 mph on a long straightaway, hoping the truck would go around. It wouldn’t.
“He was so close behind me, I couldn’t see his taillights, but I could see his marker lamps on his mirrors, his tow mirrors,” Hartford said. “So I knew it was a Ford pickup, and I knew it was like a three-quarter or a 1-ton. It was a big pickup.”
She couldn’t make out the color in the dark. She called her husband.
“I said, ‘This pickup is tailgating me,’ and said, ‘It’s really kind of making me nervous, because if I had to stop for a deer, it would run me over. It would run me off the road,’” Hartford said.
“And he goes, ‘Well, just stop.’ And I said, ‘I am not stopping. I’m in the middle of freaking nowhere,’” she added.
She made it through Roundup with the truck still on her bumper.
North of town, climbing toward Grass Range, Hartford caught a lucky break with an Amish buggy sluggishly clapping up a blind hill and slowing traffic.
“I darted around the Amish buggy, right before the blind hill, and he couldn’t get around them, and I just gunned it, and I was going probably 90 mph just to put space between us,” Hartford said. “I never seen him again.”
Hartford carries a .380 pistol. She had it out and on the seat. She didn’t show it — between the dark and her tinted windows, she wasn’t sure the driver behind her would have seen it anyway.
When Lamb’s post crossed her Facebook feed, Hartford said the parallels stopped her cold.
“It’s the same exact situation,” she said. “I can’t say for certain it was the same person, but it sure seems like it was the same person.”
Hartford said she believes the driver is hunting for circumstance: single women, after dark, on a corridor he knows is desolate and short on cell coverage.
“They’re targeting them at gas stations,” she said. “That’s the only place they could have found me, because it’s the only place I’ve stopped.”
The Candidate
Penny Ronning, cofounder and president of the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force, had a similar drive in 2022.
She remembers it as the only time in nearly a year of solo campaign travel across 41 Montana counties that she felt afraid.
Ronning, then a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, was driving from Billings to Havre for a campaign event.
Instead of taking the interstate, she chose the back roads — north out of Winifred on Highway 236, a route that runs about 30 miles of gravel through some of the most remote country in the state before dropping into the Missouri River Breaks, which Ronning compared to a Montana version of the Grand Canyon.
As she entered the gravel, a four-door white pickup with blacked-out windows pulled in behind her.
“That was what made it frightening,” Ronning said. “It was that I was followed.”
Ronning, who has spent years working on human trafficking policy and prevention, was careful to push back on the framing that has circulated on Facebook around the Lamb case — that the white-pickup encounters are likely abduction attempts tied to trafficking networks.
“Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will,” Ronning said. “Just because someone is being followed, that doesn’t rise to the level of human trafficking.”
The most prevalent form of human trafficking in the United States, she said, is familial trafficking, one family member trafficking another.
In Montana, she said, labor trafficking is also common in construction, nail salons, illicit massage businesses, hospitality and domestic servitude in pockets of high-end real estate.
Sex trafficking almost always begins with someone the victim knows.
The Watch
Back in Grass Range, every white pickup that rolls past the four-corner blinking light is now turning heads.
Manley said her store has worked closely with the Fergus County Sheriff’s Office on past incidents, and her cameras are essentially a standing resource for investigators.
She also said the response on social media has dismayed her, commenters questioning whether these highway stalking incidents happened at all, or suggesting Grass Range itself isn’t safe.
She believes her store, and others like it in remote pockets of Montana, are informal refuges.
“We’ve all been there, whether it’s in a snowstorm or where we’re just uncomfortable driving like this where we’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ you see the big lights and you’re like, there’s a beacon of safety, essentially,” Manley said.
She said that her eyes are open to potential threats along the isolated highways connecting Grass Range to the rest of the world.
“We know that it is a highway that has a reputation for, you know, trafficking, drug moving, all of those different things, and that’s why we are as diligent as we are,” said Manley. “We really care about the safety of our community, our employees, and our customers.”
Manley remains in contact with the Lambs.
“She told me, ‘I’m not going to quit looking,’” said Travis, explaining how Manley is arranging for the Lambs to review the footage themselves.
Travis figures that perhaps, “Instead of a white Ford, maybe it’s a tan Dodge.”
He added, “I’m hoping somebody’s like, ‘I know that pickup.’ That’s what I’m praying for.”
So is Lizette, who told Cowboy State Daily, she’s thankful for the response to her story. She’s also thankful she was traveling with her sidearm.
“Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in now. You know, Montana, in the middle of nowhere,” said Lizette, who encouraged anyone else with similar encounters to come forward.
“This is just a reminder that it is happening,” she said. “It is real.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
Montana
Montana Lottery Powerball, Lotto America results for April 18, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at April 18, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from April 18 drawing
24-25-39-46-61, Powerball: 01, Power Play: 5
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from April 18 drawing
18-21-22-32-42, Star Ball: 10, ASB: 03
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from April 18 drawing
10-16-29-31, Bonus: 13
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Montana Cash numbers from April 18 drawing
06-08-09-20-22
Check Montana Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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