UCI Gravel World Series – Hugo Drechou outsprints Petr Vakoč and Torbjørn Røed to win Alpine Gravel Challenge

USA’s Morgan Aguirre (Enough Cycling) and French rider Hugo Drechou (Groove Gravel) gained the elite class of the Alpine Gravel Challenge on Sunday in Champéry, Switzerland. 

The 94km route was one of many ultimate three Trek UCI Gravel World Series occasions of the 2024 season that qualify riders for the UCI Gravel World Championships in Belgium, October 5-6.

Aguirre completed second within the girls’s total behind Swiss mountain bike specialist Sina Frei (Specialized Factory Racing), who took the highest honours for the ladies’s 19-34 age class. On the professional girls’s podium with Aguirre had been Annabel Fisher (Classified Ridley Factory Team) and Axelle Dubau-Prévót (Groove Gravel).

On the lads’s facet, Drechou, who gained the Oregon Trail Gravel stage race and was fourth at The Rift Gravel, emerged from a three-rider dash for the victory. 

After a bit of greater than 3 hours and 31 minutes, he took a one-second benefit throughout the road forward of Petr Vakoč (Canyon Integray L27) and Torbjørn Andre Røed (Trek Driftless). Just the week earlier than Vakoč and Røed went 1-2, respectively, at La Monsterrato in Italy.

The longest of the three routes, the 94km route headed throughout the Dents du Midi mountain vary of south-western Switzerland with 3,190 metres of elevation achieve. The first 30km from Monthey was primarily on a paved floor, and included a protracted 17.5km climb with just a few small sectors of filth and a 6.2% common gradient. 

Gravel took over as soon as passing by Champéry, getting a glimpse of the end line on a circuit close to the French border. On that loop, a 10km climb on an un-groomed floor was a key aspect with a 5.7% common gradient, leaving a shorter third climb earlier than the ultimate 15km again on pavement for the downhill run into Champéry.

Aguirre stated she rode at her personal tempo and let a entrance group rush away at first, and used the three predominant climbs to claw her method again to the entrance of the ladies’s race, profitable in a time of 4:15:56. 

“After actually attempting to kick issues into gear this second half the season this one means so much,” Aguirre stated on her Instagram account to rejoice her first UCI podium.

“I knew {that a} race with plenty of climbing would play to my strengths, however it’s all the time arduous to understand how precisely if the legs will come round after again to again weekends.”

She known as it “a four-hour TT with some actually quick descents” as soon as she moved solo to the entrance on the third climb. 

The week earlier than she completed one spot off the rostrum at Monsterrando Gravel in Italy, and two weeks earlier than that was seventh at Gravel Grit n’ Grind in Sweden.

Only two different occasions within the UCI Gravel World Series stay for athletes to achieve {qualifications} for the UCI Gravel World Championships: the Sea Otter Europe Girona on September 21 and the Graean Cymru in Wales on September 22. 

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