There is no such thing as a downtime for Lauren Stephens after competing in three occasions on the latest Street Worlds in Zurich, as she has made the quick journey over to Leuven to characterize Staff USA within the elite girls’s occasion on the UCI Gravel World Championships this weekend.
Stephens is considered one of a number of riders on the beginning record who was scheduled to compete in back-to-back World Championships together with newly-crowned highway race world champion Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) and under-23 highway world champion and elite mountain bike world champion Puck Pieterse (Netherlands). However she mentioned she has taken a while to recuperate 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 highway race. I am going to spend the week there recovering and doing recon of the Gravel Worlds course,” Stephens informed Cyclingnews earlier than she competed within the particular person time trial, combined staff relay and highway 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 traces up at mass-start gravel occasions of equal distance within the US, reminiscent of Unbound Gravel 100 the place she gained this 12 months, however she mentioned that whereas race distances and occasion guidelines are half of a bigger dialogue in the case of 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 mentioned. “The very best distance for girls must be set primarily based on having an important girls’s race, it has nothing to do with what distance is nice for the boys’s race. There are many elements that make our races completely different however that is a bigger dialogue.”
One facet of the principles on the UCI Gravel World Championships that Stephens helps is the beginning grid process. This was modified final 12 months to a factors system whereby positions are allotted primarily based on a cumulation of factors collected in the course of the Gravel World Sequence occasions and the earlier 12 months’s Gravel World Championship, together with “50% of the factors within the UCI rankings highway, mountain bike cross-country (XCO), mountain bike marathon (XCM) and cyclocross”.
“The sphere is rising and getting extra aggressive annually,” Stephens mentioned. “I’d say the very best enchancment has been the beginning grid process, one thing I really feel many races might be taught from.”
Stephens is acquainted with some facets of the route, which had been a part of the European Championships final 12 months. 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.
“Components of the course had been used final 12 months 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 12 months so issues will break up slowly all race,” Stephens mentioned.
“The race shall be similar to traditional races with huge 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.
Staff USA initially introduced a line-up that would come with ten riders. Nevertheless, because of an absence of economic and racing assist 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 an alternative 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 stage of assist 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 Sequence occasion this 12 months, 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 onerous to understand how you stand towards the opposite prime riders at Worlds. There are just a few UCI gravel races in the course of the 12 months that see just a few prime riders at every. Then individuals who have by no means performed a (UCI) gravel occasion that 12 months, like me, present up!” Stephens mentioned when requested how she thinks she’s going to do in her third time racing the Gravel Worlds.
“That was the great distance of claiming I don’t know, however my purpose is to be on the rostrum, identical to each race.”
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