Alison Jackson is about to make her British gravel racing debut this weekend as she traces up for the British Gravel Championship in Galloway, Scotland.
The race is a part of the annual three-day Raiders Gravel occasion, moved up and throughout the border from Suffolk for this 12 months after organiser RedOn skilled points with forestry charges.
Jackson, the Canadian winner of final 12 months’s Paris-Roubaix, will participate within the elite girls’s championship race, though will not be eligible to turn out to be champion as she is just not British. She’s going to go face to face with riders together with CiCLE Traditional winner Eluned King, Nationwide Street Collection winner Monica Greenwood and RTTC street bike medallist Rebecca Richardson.
The lads’s area can be replete with hitters, together with former champion Jacob Vaughan, Gralloch 2024 winner Matt Holmes, CX star Cameron Mason and retired WorldTour rider Nathan Haas.
It is not the primary time that Jackson – who rides for EF Schooling-Oatly-Cannondale – has raced in Scotland. She took half within the Glasgow World Championships and in addition the Tour of Scotland in 2019, the place she gained a stage and was second total.
“The nation is gorgeous and the crowds are superior,” she advised Gravel Champs organiser RedOn. “I am wanting ahead to exploring one other a part of Scotland.”
She has solely ridden one gravel race earlier than, in Canada, and mentioned: “I really like exploring and adventuring and doing one thing new. So this, you realize, it is nonetheless bike racing, however within the new and exploring means. I am wanting ahead to a few days of racing and making an attempt to determine this gravel factor.”
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Jackson shall be driving all three days of the Raiders occasion, which begins with stage one tomorrow (Friday Aug 30), known as ‘Clatteringshaws’.
The British Gravel Championship itself is held on Saturday Aug 31, with elite and junior riders taking up a 87.6km route within the Galloway hills that options 1,399m of ascent. Raiders problem riders will trip one other (primarily downhill) 13km to finish the 100.9km ‘Grannoch’ route.
Sunday sees the third and ultimate stage, known as the ‘Skerrow’, which is 65.6km lengthy with 858m of climbing.
Raiders Gravel, says RedOn, affords “cyclists of all ranges the prospect to expertise Scotland’s breathtaking terrain in a singular and thrilling format. With three days of racing by way of among the most picturesque surroundings within the UK, (it) guarantees not solely fierce competitors but additionally an opportunity to attach with the biking group in a relaxed, social setting.”
