National champs Stephens and Wertz headline Team USA roster at the UCI Gravel World Championships
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USA Cycling has announced its roster of elite and age-group cyclists to take on the world’s best at the UCI Gravel World Championship on October 5 and 6.
This is the third year of the Gravel World Championships, which, after having been held in Italy for two editions, will take place in the Flanders region of Belgium. In 2023, the elite races were won by Matej Mohorič (Slovenia / Team Bahrain Victorious) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland / Canyon-SRAM).
This year, Team USA hopes to find itself on the elite podium with a roster that blends WorldTour road racing experience with top gravel racers. Freshly crowned U.S. national gravel champions Lauren Stephens and Brennan Wertz will be joined by the likes of retired WorldTour racer Ted King, Visma-Lease a Bike rider Colby Simmons, DNA Pro Cycling‘s Shayna Powless and past Unbound Gravel winner Lauren De Crescenzo.
Notably missing from the list of athletes is Keegan Swenson, who is considered to be the top gravel racer in the country but failed to secure a spot. Riders had multiple ways to qualify for the Gravel World Championships thanks to the UCI’s Cycling for All initiative. These qualifications included a finish in the top 25% of one of the UCI Gravel World Series events, a win in their National Championship category, or being nominated as a ‘wild card’ addition by finishing in the top five at the Elite Gravel National Championships.
The Europe-based UCI Gravel World Championships have thus far eschewed the long distances popularised by American gravel races, and the routes for the 2024 event are no different. The elite women’s field will tackle 133 kilometres on Saturday, October 5th, and the elite men will cover “just” 179 kilometres the following day. Compared to the 200-320-kilometre U.S. races, these distances are rather short indeed. But where it lacks in distances, it makes up for in punchy climbs and narrow, twisty-turny paths.
Gravel, cobblestones and unpaved surfaces make up 56% of the route, many sections of which were previously featured in the 2023 European Gravel Championship, won by Classics specialist Jasper Stuyven (Belgium) and sprinter Lorena Wiebes (The Netherlands). The paved sections will also be familiar for some, as the 2021 UCI Road World Championships took place in the same region, travelling between Antwerpen and Leuven. This Classics-style race was won in a sprint by Elisa Balsamo (Italy) in the women’s race and by Julian Alaphilippe (France) who entered the finish solo in the men’s event.
Podium hopefuls representing Team USA in the elite categories are:
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