There isn’t any downtime for Lauren Stephens after competing in three occasions on the latest Highway Worlds in Zurich, as she has made the brief journey over to Leuven to symbolize Staff USA within the elite ladies’s occasion on the UCI Gravel World Championships this weekend.
Stephens is one in every of a number of riders on the beginning record who was scheduled to compete in back-to-back World Championships together with newly-crowned street race world champion Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) and under-23 street world champion and elite mountain bike world champion Puck Pieterse (Netherlands). However she mentioned 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 street race. I will spend the week there recovering and doing recon of the Gravel Worlds course,” Stephens instructed Cyclingnews earlier than she competed within the particular person time trial, blended staff relay and street race in Zurich.
The elite ladies 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 usually traces up at mass-start gravel occasions of equal distance within the US, reminiscent of Unbound Gravel 100 the place she gained this yr, however she mentioned that whereas race distances and occasion guidelines are half of a bigger dialogue with regards to gravel racing, she expects that the shorter ladies’s race and separate classes for the Worlds will supply nice racing in Leuven.
“I am not racing the lads and I do not suppose it issues to check to them,” Stephens mentioned. “The very best distance for girls needs to be set primarily based on having an ideal ladies’s race, it has nothing to do with what distance is nice for the lads’s race. There are many components that make our races totally different however that is a bigger dialogue.”
One facet of the foundations 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 Sequence occasions and the earlier yr’s Gravel World Championship, together with “50% of the factors within the UCI rankings street, mountain bike cross-country (XCO), mountain bike marathon (XCM) and cyclocross”.
“The sector is rising and getting extra aggressive every year,” Stephens mentioned. “I’d say the perfect enchancment has been the beginning grid process, one thing I really feel many races may study from.”
Stephens is conversant in some elements of the route, which had been a part of the European Championships final yr. However 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.
“Elements 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 mentioned.
“The race might be similar to traditional races with massive battles to be within the entrance to begin every off-road sector. I am envisioning a 4-hour cyclocross race.”
There’s a high-calibre discipline anticipated to compete within the occasion with 137 starters and Stephens, who secured her second consecutive nationwide title, might be among the many favourites.
Staff USA initially introduced a line-up that would come with ten riders. Nevertheless, resulting from an absence 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 ultimate Life Time Grand Prix occasion.
Whereas 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 Biking between her journeys to Highway Worlds and Gravel Worlds.
Stephens gained her second consecutive nationwide title on the USA Biking Gravel Championships in September and likewise gained Rattlesnake Gravel Grind, SBT GRVL and defended the ladies’s title at Garmin Gravel Worlds in Nebraska.
Though she hasn’t competed in a UCI Gravel World Sequence 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 extremely onerous to understand how you stand in opposition to the opposite high riders at Worlds. There are a number of UCI gravel races throughout the yr that see a number of high riders at every. Then individuals who have by no means finished a (UCI) gravel occasion that yr, like me, present up!” Stephens mentioned when requested how she thinks she is going to do in her third time racing the Gravel Worlds.
“That was the good distance of claiming I do not know, however my objective is to be on the rostrum, identical to each race.”
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