10 riders to watch at inaugural Gravel World Championships

Sagan Ferrand-Prevot Van der Poel Cromwell Gravel World Championships 2022 Getty Images composite

Peter Sagan, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Mathieu van der Poel, and Tiffany Cromwell are among the big names taking part in the inaugural Gravel Worlds (Image credit: Getty Images composite)

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Elite women
Elite men

Expect the unexpected at the inaugural UCI Gravel World Championships this weekend. The wildly-popular discipline has been driven by ambitious athletes who are independent of traditional team support and tactics, so a championships environment with national allegiances tips the norm for a gravel race.

In addition, women race separately from the men, which is also unusual for the usual wild west stampede-style of full-speed adventure. The start lists include a potpourri of names, from pro road tour riders to mountain bike specialists. Most of the new names came from a qualification process through the year-long Trek UCI Gravel World Series, where the top 25% of each race made the cut in their age groups.

Many of the US stars on gravel did not seek a roster spot via a quota selection process made available to national federations, remaining stateside instead to avoid the long travel for one day of racing. Many of the big names in US gravel are focused on the final stop of the Life Time Grand Prix in two weeks, with its $250,000 overall cash purse at stake. However, Life Time contenders Sarah Sturm, Emily Newsom and Alex Howes will make the trip for the US team.

Italy hosted one of the rounds of the World Series on September 3 at La Monsterrato in the Piemonte region, with 122km and 1,390 metres of elevation gain. More than 300 kilometres to the east in the Veneto region, riders will experience a World Championships course that is longer than the World Series race but has half of the climbing. Combining that with dry weather conditions, it should be a fast and dusty pack of riders for both elite fields who will most likely need a final kick in a sprint to earn spots in the record books.

Lauren De Crescenzo gained entry into the inaugural World Championships by way of the quota selection process for Team USA. Her name is synonymous with gravel racing, having put on a show to win the 2021 Unbound Gravel 200 title. From there, she won back-to-back crowns at SBT GRVL in Colorado and Gravel Worlds in Nebraska. And she was fourth at the US pro road race championship, though that course had a lot of climbing. She’s got a teammate from her Cinch Rise team as well, the 2021 Rift Gravel champion Holly Mathews.

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is a multi-disciplinary superstar on a quest for a 10th elite world title. So far this season, the French rider has won three world titles - mountain bike events in cross-country, short track cross-country and marathon cross-country. Between 2014-2015, she became the first athlete to hold world titles in three separate disciplines - road, cyclo-cross and mountain biking, but a flowy course may not present her enough obstacles to distance the field.

Tiffany Cromwell is a 12-year veteran in the road peloton. This season with Canyon-SRAM Racing, the Australian had top-20 finishes at Paris-Roubaix Femmes and Classic Lorient Agglomération, the latter at a distance of 158.4km. She won the women’s category on the Blue Course at SBT GRVL, which was 160km. Later on the gravel at La Monsterrato she was third. The 140-kilometre distance should be no problem.

Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands)

Mathieu van der Poel always attracts attention, and for good reason. The 2021 Strade Bianche winner is motivated to add another rainbow jersey to his collection of four elite cyclo-cross world titles. He has a strong Dutch squad to support him, including Unbound Gravel 200 winner Ivar Slik and three teammates - Niki Terpstra, Piotr Havik and Jasper Ockeloen - who each won at least one race in the Gravel World Series.

Adam Blazevic will lead the Australian team on the men’s side. He won both of the Australian rounds of the Gravel World Series and was on the podium at another round. He had a strong year on the road in his European races started well with France but he then had a string of mechanicals. And if he isn’t on form, then look for experienced ‘alternative’ riders Nathan Haas and Lachlan Morton to be in the mix.

Alexey Lutsenko won the pro-only gravel race a year ago, Serenissima Gravel, 132km across the Veneto region. He will line up for Kazakhstan with Astana Qazaqstan teammate Yevgeniy Fedorov, who comes in as the new under-23 world road race champion. The pair could easily form alliances with two other WorldTour teammates during the race, expected to be Colombian Miguel Ángel López and Italian Leonardo Basso.

Slovakian road champion Peter Sagan may be making his first gravel appearance on the world stage, but you can never count out the three-time road world champion. He has a world junior title in mountain biking and even took a spin in the e-MTB race at this year’s Mountain Bike World Championships. He has conquered the cobbles at Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders and three Ghent- Wevelgem races, so he may bounce back on the podium after health issues due to several bouts with COVID. He admitted he may not be in top form, but wanted to take part “to have fun with the other riders and the fans.”

Jackie has been involved in professional sports for more than 30 years in news reporting, sports marketing and public relations. She founded Peloton Sports in 1998, a sports marketing and public relations agency, which managed projects for Tour de Georgia, Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah and USA Cycling. She also founded Bike Alpharetta Inc, a Georgia non-profit to promote safe cycling. She is proud to have worked in professional baseball for six years - from selling advertising to pulling the tarp for several minor league teams. She has climbed l'Alpe d'Huez three times (not fast). Her favorite road and gravel rides are around horse farms in north Georgia (USA) and around lavender fields in Provence (France), and some mtb rides in Park City, Utah (USA).