There isn’t a downtime for Lauren Stephens after competing in three occasions on the latest Street Worlds in Zurich, as she has made the brief journey over to Leuven to symbolize Group USA within the elite girls’s occasion on the UCI Gravel World Championships this weekend.
Stephens is certainly one of a number of riders on the beginning listing 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 stated 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 advised Cyclingnews earlier than she competed within the particular person time trial, combined group relay and street race in Zurich.
The elite girls 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 typically strains 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 stated that whereas race distances and occasion guidelines are half of a bigger dialogue in relation to gravel racing, she expects that the shorter girls’s race and separate classes for the Worlds will provide nice racing in Leuven.
“I am not racing the boys and I do not suppose it issues to check to them,” Stephens stated. “The most effective distance for girls ought to be set based mostly on having an ideal girls’s race, it has nothing to do with what distance is nice for the boys’s race. There are many components that make our races completely different however that is a bigger dialogue.”
One side 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 based mostly on a cumulation of factors collected throughout the Gravel World Collection 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 sphere is rising and getting extra aggressive annually,” Stephens stated. “I’d say the very best enchancment has been the beginning grid process, one thing I really feel many races might study from.”
Stephens is aware of some elements of the route, which have been a part of the European Championships final yr. However in any other case, a lot of the course shall be a brand new enterprise for her, and with restricted climbing, she anticipates a quicker race that can slowly break aside on path to Leuven.
“Elements of the course have been used final yr within the European-Belgium Gravel Champs however a lot of the course I have not seen but. There aren’t any main climbs like final yr so issues will break up slowly all race,” Stephens stated.
“The race shall be similar to traditional races with large battles to be within the entrance to start out every off-road sector. I am envisioning a 4-hour cyclocross race.”
There’s a high-calibre area anticipated to compete within the occasion with 137 starters and Stephens, who secured her second consecutive nationwide title, shall be among the many favourites.
Group USA initially introduced a line-up that would come with ten riders. Nonetheless, as a consequence of 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 closing 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 Street 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 Collection 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 totally laborious to know the way you stand towards 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 stated when requested how she thinks she is going to do in her third time racing the Gravel Worlds.
“That was the great distance of claiming I don’t know, however my aim is to be on the rostrum, similar to each race.”
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