A Week in Review -- the UCI Gravel World Championships
It’s been one week since the UCI gravel world championships. A combination of spring classic, an urban assault alleycat, and cyclocross race all rolled into one, this race always kept you own riders on their toes.
Much of the course has enough room for just one, sometimes two riders wide.
You never know the next chance to race for your country, and an invitation to the Olympics seems far fetched, so when the invitation came up Laura and I jumped at it.
The week was a bit of a rollercoaster. I was in Europe the week prior, came home for a quick reset, then back at it chasing rainbows in Belgium. I was excited right up until I saw the course (ahem… read the full summary here, please). About 100 meters in there’s a hefty roundabout, then another 100 meters later riders are funneled no more than 3 wide through a gate and along a canal. An errant move here and you’re swimming. A few hundred meters later, the course flips a u-ie, then continues unfolding over the next 180km as the most convoluted gravel course I’ve ever experienced. I was less than enthused because without any UCI points, I started 278th out of 290 riders. Here’s a video from my position at the back of the pack on the start line:
In no other gravel race have I ever been concerned about moving up through the pack. Meanwhile, the UCI is taking a page out of World Cup CX or MTB and makes the hole shot literally 75% of your race.
I’m torn on that subject but am not here to gripe, because when push comes to shove I had an awesome time! Even with the best legs of my life, my last name isn’t van der Poel, so going last to first is an impossibility. Instead I switched goals to ticking off riders and did that for the next five hours, moving from 278th to 125th. Nothing earth shattering, but Laura and I are proud to have won the self-titled “married couple racing in the elite category with kids at home”. Respectable delta, our start positions to finishing positions.
On the topic of not knowing your next worlds, today is fourteen years plus ten days since my last UCI world championship, photos below. I raced the UCI road world champs in 2010. For a little reference, Thor Hushovd won the elite men’s, Giorgia Bronzini won the women’s, and young Michael Matthews took the U-23 title. Oh how time flies.