There is not any downtime for Lauren Stephens after competing in three occasions on the latest Road Worlds in Zurich, as she has made the quick journey over to Leuven to symbolize Team USA within the elite girls’s occasion on the UCI Gravel World Championships this weekend.
Stephens is certainly one of a number of riders on the beginning record who was scheduled to compete in back-to-back World Championships together with newly-crowned highway race world champion Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) and under-23 highway world champion and elite mountain bike world champion Puck Pieterse (Netherlands). But she stated she has taken a while to get well between occasions and joined her teammates in previewing the off-road parcours to arrange for Saturday’s race.
“I head straight to Belgium after the highway race. I’ll spend the week there recovering and doing recon of the Gravel Worlds course,” Stephens informed Cyclingnews earlier than she competed within the particular person time trial, combined group relay and highway race in Zurich.
The elite girls will race alongside a 133km route between Halle and Leuven on Saturday the day earlier than the elite males’s 182km race on Sunday.
Stephens typically strains up at mass-start gravel occasions of equal distance within the US, comparable to Unbound Gravel 100 the place she received this yr, however she stated that whereas race distances and occasion guidelines are half of a bigger dialogue in relation to gravel racing, she expects that the shorter girls’s race and separate classes for the Worlds will supply nice racing in Leuven.
“I’m not racing the lads and I do not suppose it issues to match to them,” Stephens stated. “The greatest distance for ladies must be set primarily based on having an ideal girls’s race, it has nothing to do with what distance is nice for the lads’s race. There are numerous components that make our races completely different however that is a bigger dialogue.”
One side of the principles on the UCI Gravel World Championships that Stephens helps is the beginning grid process. This was modified final yr to a factors system whereby positions are allotted primarily based on a cumulation of factors collected throughout the Gravel World Series occasions and the earlier yr’s Gravel World Championship, together with “50% of the factors within the UCI rankings highway, mountain bike cross-country (XCO), mountain bike marathon (XCM) and cyclocross”.
“The area is rising and getting extra aggressive annually,” Stephens stated. “I’d say the perfect enchancment has been the beginning grid process, one thing I really feel many races may study from.”
Stephens is accustomed to some elements of the route, which had been a part of the European Championships final yr. But in any other case, a lot of the course might be a brand new enterprise for her, and with restricted climbing, she anticipates a sooner race that may slowly break aside on path to Leuven.
“Parts of the course had been used final yr within the European-Belgium Gravel Champs however a lot of the course I have not seen but. There are not any main climbs like final yr so issues will break up slowly all race,” Stephens stated.
“The race might be similar to traditional races with large battles to be within the entrance to begin every off-road sector. I’m envisioning a 4-hour cyclocross race.”
There is a high-calibre area anticipated to compete within the occasion with 137 starters and Stephens, who secured her second consecutive nationwide title, might be among the many favourites.
Team USA initially introduced a line-up that would come with ten riders. However, as a result of a scarcity of monetary and racing help from the federation for this occasion, a number of riders together with Paige Onweller and Lauren De Crescenzo, have opted to not journey abroad and as a substitute stay stateside to compete within the last Life Time Grand Prix occasion.
While Stephens selected to not touch upon why her compatriots determined to not race in these UCI Gravel Worlds, she confirmed that there was a distinction within the degree of help from USA Cycling between her journeys to Road Worlds and Gravel Worlds.
Stephens received her second consecutive nationwide title on the USA Cycling Gravel Championships in September and in addition received Rattlesnake Gravel Grind, SBT GRVL and defended the ladies’s title at Garmin Gravel Worlds in Nebraska.
Although she hasn’t competed in a UCI Gravel World Series occasion this yr, she goals to complete on the rostrum in Leuven. She has raced within the earlier two editions of the UCI Gravel World Championships ending sixth in 2023 and fifteenth in 2022.
“It’s very exhausting to know the way you stand towards the opposite prime riders at Worlds. There are just a few UCI gravel races throughout the yr that see just a few prime riders at every. Then individuals who have by no means performed a (UCI) gravel occasion that yr, like me, present up!” Stephens stated when requested how she thinks she’s going to do in her third time racing the Gravel Worlds.
“That was the good distance of claiming I don’t know, however my aim is to be on the rostrum, identical to each race.”
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