The pairing of a money purse totalling $40,000 together with the purple, white and blue of the stars-and-stripes jerseys and an opportunity to symbolize the nation on the UCI Gravel World Championships are the highlights of the menu for elite riders on the 2024 USA Biking Gravel Nationwide Championships.
Now in its second version, Gravel Nationals return to Gering, Nebraska on Sunday, September 8. Whereas the prize cash cut up equally amongst elite women and men is 33% lower than final 12 months, USA Biking confirmed to Cyclingnews that the general elite gravel winners will every obtain $10,000 in comparison with $12,000 beforehand.
There’s, nonetheless, a rise within the variety of high finishers who will share within the purse, the payouts going seven riders deep quite than simply the highest 5 final 12 months. Second place pays $5,000, third place $2,000, fourth place $1,500, and fifth, sixth and seventh taking the remaining cheques value $750, $500 and $250, respectively.
As well as, automated {qualifications} for the UCI Gravel World Championships will likely be expanded to the highest 5 for elite men and women, bumped from simply the highest 3 final 12 months. Age group Nationwide Champions will proceed, with every winner qualifying for Worlds.
“We’re happy to supply a $40,000 prize purse for the Elite races, with an equal pay out for women and men. As a corporation, we’re dedicated to supporting the game of gravel racing, and this prize purse is testomony to that,” stated Kyle Knott, USA Biking’s Director of Nationwide Occasions.
Ultimately 12 months’s inaugural Gravel Nationwide Championships, the $60,000 prize purse was used to entice high riders within the self-discipline to carve out time on the busy schedule to journey to western Nebraska, the closest main airport three hours away in Denver, Colorado. USA Biking CEO Brendan Quirk famous that the funds had been generated from entry charges and sponsorship.
Keegan Swenson (Santa Cruz Bicycles) and Lauren Stephens (now with Cynisca Biking) acquired $12,000 every for successful the elite titles. On the 2023 UCI Gravel World Championships in Italy, the newly-crowned nationwide champions had been the highest US finishers within the elite classes, the place Swenson was fifth and Stephens sixth.
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Final 12 months a complete of 544 members took half within the inaugural championships, with 41 separate classes providing titles. The schedule would be the identical as final 12 months, with the elite males taking the lengthy course of 131.4 miles with males’s open 19-plus class at 6:30 a.m. native time, then the elite ladies taking the identical course alongside ladies’s open 19-plus division quarter-hour later.
A wave of riders throughout a number of age teams, the one velocity division and non-binary division will comply with one other quarter-hour after the elite ladies on the lengthy course. Three different distances – 88.2 miles, 56.9 miles, and 24.8 miles – will likely be used for 3 different waves of riders.
All programs will stay the identical as final 12 months, utilizing 90% filth and gravel roads in western Nebraska, which can move well-known rock formations at Scotts Bluff Nationwide Monument and Chimney Rock that when served as landmarks for Native Individuals and settlers touring west on the Oregon Path.
The prize purse for the US Gravel Nationwide Championships continues to be among the many high money payouts for a single day of off-road racing within the US. The very best this 12 months was Valley of Tears Gravel Bike Race in Turkey, Texas. The primary-time March race marketed a $26,000 prize purse, which was doubled to $52,000 the morning of the race,with the proceeds coming from a beneficiant sponsor, and paid 20 deep. SBT GRVL has a $22,000 purse, with winners every incomes $5,000, and payouts going 5 deep.
