Lauren Stephens gained the Unbound 100 in 2024(Picture credit score: Future)
Unbound 100 males – l to r – winner Elliott Baring, third Jim Snitzer, 4th Stefano Barberi(Picture credit score: Future)
US gravel nationwide champion Lauren Stephens (Cynisca) gained the ladies’s division of the Life Time Unbound Gravel 100 whereas Elliott Baring (Baring Efficiency) outdueled 4 different riders to take the boys’s victory in Emporia, Kansas.
Stephens crossed the road on Business Road in downtown Emporia with a time of 5:06:40, good for the ladies’s title and inserting ninth general within the full 100-mile area.
Flavia Oliveira Parks was second for the ladies in Unbound 100 – 15:54 again. Laura King third one other 10 minutes again.
The highest ladies’s contenders had been blended with the entrance group of males for the primary 20 miles, the divisions having a mixed mass begin for the 100-mile race. By the mid-way level, Stephens remained with the boys’s entrance group and eased away from the remainder of the ladies.
“It was a last-minute deal, we determined after Nationals that I used to be going to do the 100. That is the gravel that I like, you are simply making an attempt to outlive and get good coaching in and have an excellent day,” Stephens advised Cyclingnews on the end, celebrating her third victory within the 100-mile gravel race.
“Sadly I needed to cease and put air in my tire at 100k (40 miles to go), it was in a headwind on the street part. It appeared just like the group was going gradual after which that enticed somebody to assault. So I did not make it again to the entrance group. We ended up with a pleasant group of 5 – 6 who labored all collectively.”
5 males had been collectively on the entrance on the ultimate paved ascent of the race on Highland Hill. Baring launched his dash fourth wheel within the group within the remaining lengthy stretch on Business Road to edge Alexis Cartier (Cycles Area-360 Company), who was second. Baring’s teammate Jim Snitzer was third.
Riders within the 100 mile race, truly 108.5 miles (175km) this 12 months, throughout the Flint Hills of Kansas began at 7:30 round an hour-and-a-half after the elite riders taking over the headline 200 mile race. The course, which used a part of the 200 occasion route, began and finishes in Emporia and included 3,651 toes (1,113m) of elevation acquire.
The way it unfolded
Saturday’s 100-mile occasion for Unbound Gravel, now in its fifth version, got here in at 108.5 miles with 3,651 toes of elevation acquire. The route adopted a lot of the identical relentless climbing and tough, rocky roads because the signature 200-mile occasion, this 12 months switching again to a northbound route after two years of utilizing a south course.
The boys’s area didn’t see any important strikes for the primary 20 miles, a mass of 112 riders main the cost, the tempo set primarily by USA’s Beckam Drake and Stefano Barbero, Valtteri Bottas of Monaco and Theo De Groote of Canada.
US gravel nationwide champion Lauren Stephens, contemporary off a street race win on the Pan American Championships in Brazil one week in the past, set the tempo on the entrance of the ladies’s division after the primary 20 miles. Giving chase had been Flavia Oliveira Parks, Caroline Mani and Sophie Vitzthum Von Eckstaedt, Kaya Musgrave and Laura King, all of the lead ladies nonetheless blended with the boys.
The lone checkpoint, for rider help, on the 100-mile course was at mile 54 in Council Grove. Main the entrance of the race on the midway level had been Spencer Miller, Alexis Cartier and Lauren Stephens, who was first within the ladies’s division at this level and third general. Her husband Mat Stephens was additionally a part of the combination.
A bunch of six males broke away on the entrance as soon as the race handed the reservoir at mile 80 – Cartier, Barberi, Jim Snitzer, Spencer Miller, Elliott Baring and Sam Brown. Lauren Stephens was six minutes of the primary group, however greater than 9 minutes forward of Parks, using second general for girls.
Passing the ‘water oasis’ at mile 92 in Americus, 5 riders drove the tempo on the entrance – Barberi, Baring, Cartier, Snitzer and Miller. Cartier started to yo-yo off the again however regained type for the ultimate cost again to Emporia.
Lauren Stephens nonetheless had a strong margin within the ladies’s division, using with 4 males, all 9:24 off one of the best time, and held regular to her third title at Unbound 100.
