Placing on a UCI Gravel World Collection race is not any small activity however in 2026 it is simply the entree for organisers of the SEVEN race in Nannup, Western Australia, though it is a beneficiant starter given the occasion is drawing greater than 2,000 riders eager to check out a course that later this yr will host the UCI Gravel World Championships
„To have members from 29 international locations heading to Nannup, is a testomony to the repute the race has constructed as one of many world’s premier gravel occasions, and the joy that’s constructing for the 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships,“ stated occasion and race director Stephen Gallagher in a media assertion.
The race which joined the UCI Gravel World Collection in its very first yr, 2022, has grown from 235 riders in 2018, then first handed the 1,000 rider mark in 2021 earlier than making the leap to what’s anticipated to be over 2,000 riders on the beginning line this yr on Saturday Could 16.
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That is a scale probably not too far off the numbers which will probably be seen for the World Championships occasion on October 10-11, with 2,954 riders throughout the divisions lining up on the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships in Bolero.
„It definitely grows the status round SEVEN, the truth that the World’s is coming down, however I believe it is all a snowball impact,“ Gallagher instructed Cyclingnews final month.
„I imply the rationale the Worlds is right here is due to the expansion of SEVEN, the expansion of SEVEN is concerning the neighborhood that had been coming and turning up yearly. And once more the rationale we began SEVEN proper proper at the start was due to the panorama and the great thing about the locations that we’ve got that we needed to indicate off, in order that snowball impact has continued from there proper as much as a World Championships.“
In addition to drawing an growing variety of riders from world wide this yr, SEVEN features a sturdy contingent of Australian rivals. Defending champions Tiffany Cromwell and Mark O’Brien, who’re additionally each Australian nationwide champions, are among the many UCI Gravel World Collection spherical winners returning to the beginning line within the small city within the southern part of Western Australia.
Former winners Brendan Johnston and Tasman Nankervis will even be on the beginning line, together with Adam Blazevic who’s getting back from an extended harm restoration course of after he was hit by a automobile whereas out coaching in 2024. Then there are the second place finishers from a yr in the past, Mark Chong and Cassia Boglio, in addition to Kane Richards, who was tenth within the Australian Nationwide Championships highway race this yr, Australian Cyclo-cross nationwide champion Tristan Nash and likewise 2023 Soiled Warrny winner Matilda Raynolds.
The 125km SEVEN course begins and finishes in Nannup, working via the Blackwood Valley and packing in additional than 3,000m of vertical ascent alongside the way in which on the course which is greater than 80% gravel. Together with the SEVEN gravel race, there are the shorter occasions of FIVE at 85km, THREE at 49km and the 25km ONE.
