The Robin Judkins-inspired event has been going since 1983 but, by the time it was taken over in 2015 by Trojan Holdings, the event had just 456 competitors.
In 2007, there were 920 competitors but that dropped by more than half in the next six years.
New race director Richard Ussher, a five-time champion of the event from 2005-2013, faced a big challenge in 2015.
Several administration roles changed and new sections were added to the event, such as the stand-alone mountain run and the tandem team section. Numbers began to rise immediately, which led to entries being closed off for last year’s as early as August 2018 and a record field of 996 taking part.
The strong interest continued for this year’s race and entries closed less than three months after the ending of the 2019 race
A total of 1066 people took up the challenge of crossing the Main Divide by bike, foot and kayak last weekend.
The event is a financial boon for small towns along the course such as Greymouth and Kumara.
"It’s fantastic to see. But there remains plenty of challenges for organisers of the event, in terms of getting that many people from one side of the South Island to the other,” race director Glen Currie, who took over the reins from Ussher, said.
"There have been so many things that Richard and myself and the Trojan group have worked on in terms of getting the race back.
"One of them being trying to broaden the interest of people. Like school kids and the like, saying that this is a sport that you can do as well."