If ‘quicker, greater, stronger’ is the motto for the Olympic Games, then ‘quicker, richer, louder’ may very well be the brand new mantra for gravel racing after the 2024 season.
The trajectory of gravel engagement, be it the skilled riders sprinting to the end line after 200 miles or the upper numbers of participation from keen amateurs of all ages, continues to soar. Opportunities to seize bragging rights at stand-alone occasions or multi-race sequence are sprouting across the globe, now providing gender fairness in prize cash and race classes.
There continues to be nobody normal definition of ‘gravel’, together with how a lot or what sort of terrain needs to be on an elite-level course, be it a gran fondo or a World Championships. The Worlds course in Belgium was distinctive and we’ll most definitely see one thing very completely different in Nice, France subsequent October, too.
‘Alternative’ was one of many early descriptions of gravel racing and using, and that also rings true at this time. Gravel refuses to be confined to at least one set of requirements, staying true to its US roots, and discovering agency floor globally amongst broad open areas, hidden valleys and filth paths.
What continues to be reliable are the athletes themselves who sort out off-road adventures and make it look maybe not straightforward, however no less than enjoyable, even whether it is usually sort 2 on the size – ache and struggling within the second however pleasurable in hindsight.
Carolin Schiff and Petr Vakoc scored probably the most factors within the 2024 TREK UCI Gravel World Series, giving them beneficial beginning positions on the UCI Gravel World Championships. On the sequence scene, Karolina Migoń and Simen Nordahl Svendsen gained the Gravel Earth Series, Keegan Swenson and Sofia Gomez Villafañe remained dominant within the Life Time Grand Prix, and Villafañe doubled up on the ladies’s aspect to win Belgian Waffle Ride’s Tripel Crown whereas Peter Stetina gained the lads’s title.
Cyclingnews takes a glance throughout the spectrum of gravel, pulling out a number of the key notable developments and moments of 2024.
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Nothing common about seismic speeds
When the climate situations cooperate, file occasions proceed to fall. It’s not simply street racers coming to gravel both that improve the tempo in fields. Factors embrace stronger all-around riders, higher gear and swifter transitions for gear and hydration/diet stops all including as much as shorter occasions spent on long-distance programs.
We’ll begin with a glance again at Unbound Gravel 200, because it has a stable historical past for the self-discipline relationship again to 2006. In the primary 15 editions of the 200-mile race, there was just one dash end for elite males, and that was 2015 when Yuri Hauswald completed in 13:01:17, one second quicker than Michael Sencenbaugh. They averaged 15.44 miles per hour (24.8 kph) over a muddy north course. Amanda Nauman gained the ladies’s division in 14:08:18 and averaged 14.22 mph (22.8 kph).
Nine years afterward an identical course at Unbound 200, albeit a primarily dry one, the common pace was as much as 22 mph (35 kph) for males and 19.4 mph (31 kph) for girls. Men’s winner Lachlan Morton edged Chad Haga in 9:11:47 and ladies’s winner Rosa Klöser led a nine-woman dash in 10:26:02. A seismic change.
A equally lengthy endurance check in Europe is the Traka 360, and speeds there are additionally on the rise. Mattia de Marchi was the primary rider to complete in underneath 13 hours in 2023, a yr with out main mud permitting him to common 17.3 mph (27.85 kph). Amity Rockwell took an hour off the ladies’s earlier greatest time that yr, profitable the ladies’s division in 15:01:02, averaging 14.9 mph (23.97 kph). While the 2024 race was shortened by 20km as a consequence of antagonistic climate damaging sections earlier within the week, winners Peter Stetina and Karolina Migoń raised the bar on speeds, Stetina averaging 19.1 mph (30.75 kph) and Migoń averaging 17.68 mph (28.46 kph).
To see the shift in pace in a capsule, you solely want to take a look at the epic Leadville Trail 100 MTB over the previous few years, as it’s a part of the Life Time Grand Prix. Four-time winner Keegan Swenson has set new course data in consecutive years. He set a brand new course file in 2023 crushing his 2022 file by quarter-hour. In 2022, he completed 11:25 quicker than in 2021. From 2021 to 2024 Swenson has elevated his common pace by 1.89 mph (3 kph), and this yr was simply over 5 minutes shy of his 2023 file time even with a mechanical and opting to journey a drop-bar machine over a mountain bike.
UCI Gravel World Series presents new marker for flexibility
The US might have constructed high-profile gravel races and sequence which have garnered profile whereas The Traka additionally adopted that path in Europe, however there was little elsewhere that was immediately as recognisable or aspirational on a world scale. That does not imply there wasn’t a legion of different extra localised occasions, however with no formalised rating system there was no straightforward manner of marking out by which realm they belonged.
The UCI Gravel World Series has modified all that. In 2024, it one way or the other felt just like the yr the World Series went from an experiment to a fully-fledged going concern. The variety of races grew – 25 this season from 10 within the opening yr of 2022 – plus there was an more and more spectacular geographic unfold and strengthening fields of riders, many committing to creating their approach to quite a few occasions on the circuit. The privateers, who earlier than might have struggled to discover a common marker exterior the US to make use of as proof of their credentials to point out potential sponsors, now had a recognised top-tier occasion to level to – with wins or podiums on the sequence a useful addition to any pitch.
What’s extra, as qualifiers for the UCI Gravel World Championships, riders now had extra incentive than ever to show up for his or her nearest occasion and try to make the minimize for the race for the rainbow stripes. What’s extra, significantly in areas the place a couple of occasion was accessible, a catastrophic mechanical, sickness or native course that did not swimsuit did not have to finish their hopes, with one other occasion at all times across the nook.
Organisers, too, have more and more recognised the enchantment of creating native occasions a part of a globally recognised sequence, with many lining as much as be added to the calendar. So many, in reality, that now 2025 is trying to ship round 35 occasions.
A progress within the variety of races and geographic unfold of the sequence means the chance to speed up the embrace of gravel racing as a very world sport, for each the weekend warriors and budding professionals, simply retains choosing up momentum. In 2024 the sequence and World Championships established footholds as occasions which can be right here to remain.
Gravel tech topping street tech
On the tech entrance, gravel race bike know-how has continued to develop and evolve at tempo in 2024 and is extra assorted and dynamic than street tech proper now.
At the sharp finish, gravel racing is barely getting quicker and extra aggressive. This quest for pace throughout a wide range of terrain is informing the event of gravel race gear. Aerodynamics, effectivity and rolling resistance are enjoying a key half in issues.
A slew of fascinating gravel tech was launched this yr. In the run-up to Unbound Gravel, Castelli launched a gravel jersey with a built-in hydration bladder to avoid wasting weight and support aerodynamics for riders carrying their fluids in lengthy races. SRAM additionally invested additional in gravel tech with their new Red XPLR AXS 13-speed gravel groupset. Ridley quietly launched an aero gravel race bike which was ridden to fourth place at Unbound.
Wheel rim, tyre sizing and pressures are a sizzling matter in gravel proper now, in brief, larger-sized tyres could be run at decrease pressures on wider rims. This boosts effectivity by decreasing vibrational losses over tough floor and saves riders watts throughout a race. US gravel racer Dylan Johnson has used aero wheels and Continental MTB tyres on his gravel bike this yr. Whilst Zipp’s new 303 XPLR wheelset makes use of the widest inside rim measurement ever seen in street or gravel at 32mm, the wheels are wider than many MTB rims.
At the beginning of October, Marianna Vos used the Gravaa adjustable tyre inflation system to dash to victory on the UCI Gravel World Championships in Belgium. The system has been developed over a number of years and permits riders to deflate and inflate their tyres repeatedly to swimsuit the terrain. The capacity to run decrease tyre pressures on rougher floor and better stress on quicker surfaces goals to create a extra environment friendly total setup, slightly than the rider having to compromise. Vos used the system with tubular tyres apparently, maybe to mitigate the chance of unseating a tubeless tyre if using at very low pressures.
Gravel race tech is thrilling proper now as a result of gear is being experimented with and examined to search out the quickest possibility for a spread of programs and terrain. We have seen drop bars getting used on a mountain bike at Leadville, in addition to loads of gravel suspension forks and a spread of different fairly loopy setups. Gravel racing isn’t slowing down and we count on to see extra of the identical in 2025.
Elite women-only begins
Unbound Gravel 200 was a game-changer for the elite ladies. For the primary time within the race’s 17-year historical past of mass begins with combined genders, the elite ladies acquired important separation from the lads on the sound of the gun.
Fifteen minutes after the elite males, the elite ladies took to the course from downtown Emporia, Kansas, after which there was a big hole of 25 minutes for the amateurs to pounce from the road. At The Traka 360, the beginning occasions have been reverse, with the ladies pedalling at 6:00 a.m. native time in Girona, Spain and the elite males taking off with open classes half-hour later.
All the UCI Gravel World Series occasions are impartial, so begin procedures do range, however pointers do specify that from a begin grid of elite women and men there needs to be a minimal of a one-minute interval between the classes. There are variations of begin preparations for age group classes.
“I did numerous UCI races this yr and most of them (all) had personal ladies begins, however in the long run every little thing was combined once more due to much less time gaps between ladies and age group males. I believe the race with the much less males’s impression was Unbound this yr,” Schiff, who gained three UCI Gravel Series occasions in addition to The Traka 200, instructed Cyclingnews.
“In some races we begin earlier than the age teams. With this state of affairs the lads catch us and simply the strongest of us ladies are ready to stick with them. The different model was that we begin final simply earlier than the age group 60+. With this ladies have the issue that we now have to move the slower age group males which was actually harmful typically.”
US organisers Life Time adjusted begins for all the races of their off-road sequence to permit ladies a separate ship off. It was a very new dynamic for the racers, and for spectators to witness the skills of ladies.
“I believe we actually proved how thrilling ladies’s racing is with our efficiency,” Sarah Sturm mentioned to Cyclingnews, ending seventh within the lead pack at Unbound Gravel 200.
“The largest piece is that we now have a race from the beginning with simply ladies. Normally it’s nearly going ALL OUT from the gun and attempting to luck your manner into the quickest group of males. This means we often by no means know the place anybody is and it turns into ladies in a males’s race. All of our onerous work, coaching, making ready was rewarded with knowledgeable ladies’s race.”
One of the holdouts to vary from the group gallop begin was SBT GRVL in Colorado. In 2025 organisers will restructure with separate begins for elite males and elite ladies, which has been applauded by many riders.
Cyclocross stars seize rainbows in Belgium
The phrase ‘Classics’, not ‘traditional’, got here up repeatedly to explain the 2024 course for the UCI Gravel World Championships. After two years in Italy with a heavy mixture of pavement and filth roads, the brand new battle for rainbow stripes was contested on what most elite and novice riders likened to a Belgian Classics street course, which appeared like a magnet to draw many professional riders from different disciplines to hitch the occasion.
Many of the ‘common’ gravel riders didn’t have sufficient UCI factors to start out on the entrance of elite begin grids, thus getting squeezed from making any important strikes throughout the tight singletrack and slender bike paths, and even a spiralled bike commuter bridge by a prepare station. Where have been the enormous climbs, gnarly descents, washed-out filth roads and elevation achieve to obviously discern gravel champions?
Belgium gave gravel its personal flavour in 2024, and the riders who had one of the best technical expertise on various terrain gained the glory. It was no shock that those that had worn the rainbow stripes of cyclocross world champions Marianne Vos and Mathieu van der Poel, each representing the Netherlands, earned extra in one other self-discipline.
“Every nation has its personal form of gravel type racing,” is how Greg Van Avermaet summarised how a world championship course ought to search for gravel. “This is Belgium, in order that’s our form of gravel – some corners, quite a lot of buildings, forests, punchy climbs and never broad roads. It’s a very good mixture. I believe it is Belgium.”
Pay days are good days
The surge in gravel racing was by no means fueled by prize cash, particularly, however it does not damage to defray the prices of the largely-privateer platform. Gravel racing nonetheless comes with heavy servings of fine vibes and adventures, the place a belt buckle or a pirate sword are a type of forex, however not ones that pay the payments. In addition, the thirst to pin on a quantity is many occasions quenched by simply being a part of a bunch journey, avoiding retirement and never being distracted by a consequence.
In 2024 there have been a number of boosts in incomes alternatives primarily based on podiums. With an invite, the highest 10 riders for girls’s and males’s divisions within the Life Time Grand Prix have been provided shares in a $300,000 purse, a 20% improve from only a yr earlier than. A brand new race in a distant a part of west Texas, Valley of Tears, put up $26,000 for high 10 elite women and men riders, and firstly line doubled the provide – $52,000 for the highest 20 in each divisions. There have been occasions in Australia too that delivered, with the brand new RADL GRVL providing a prize purse of $10,000 Australian and Sutton Grange Winery – Uncorked Gravel coming to the occasion with $5,500.
Several races and sequence have additionally introduced there will likely be a extra worthwhile path primarily based on efficiency in 2025, together with $30,000 at Unbound Gravel 200 for the primary time, a whopping $100,000 at Gravel Worlds in Nebraska and a handbag of €37,500 within the Gravel Earth Series shared by tops 10s in elite males, ladies and non-binary classes.
In a glance again at 2024, riders might decide and select from a wide range of occasions providing money payouts, cool prizes, distinctive experiences in addition to the geography or viewers greatest suited to sponsor targets.
As Peter Stetina put it, “you may’t ever financial institution on prize cash. That’s like a bonus. The privateer mannequin, we’re making a residing by way of contracts and endorsements.” But because of a rising development, there may be additional cash on the market for the taking.