Keegan Swenson (Santa Cruz Bicycles) has dominated the Life Time Grand Prix gravel series for a second straight season, sweeping the first four rounds in 2023 to lead series title and cash payout with a start at Big Sugar Gravel in four weeks. He will skip this weekend’s sixth round at The Rad Dirt Fest in Colorado, which has no bearing on his points total, and lead Team USA for glory at the second edition of the UCI Gravel World Championships.
So far Swenson’s 2023 has been pretty sweet. He has just about wrapped up a the overall Life Time series for a second time, only needing to take the start at the season-ending Big Sugar Gravel on October 21. He defended his title at SGT GRVL and then won the stars-and-stripes jersey at the inaugural elite men’s US gravel championships. He also put his name in the record books with a new course record at Leadville Trail 100 MTB, an event he won for a third time, smashing the seven-year standard by a little more than 15 minutes.
Swenson has a collection of national titles as a junior, under-23 and elite rider in cross-country mountain biking and a silver medal from UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in the 2019 team relay, and now the hunt for an individual world title moves to gravel.
“I’m going over there [Italy] with high expectations,” Swenson told Cyclingnews before his planned flight to Italy on Friday, nine days before the elite men’s race on October 8.
“I know it’s a little bit of a different race, a different style of racing. It’s a little more of a road race in some ways, but there’s a little bit more gravel this year which I think should suit all of us from the US a bit better. I feel the racing over here [in the US] is really competitive. But it’s also a little bit different style of racing than they have over there in Europe.”
Like all the other competitors soon to swoop into north-east Italy, Swenson has only looked at the gravel course in Veneto on paper and on the cycling app, Komoot. There’s a lot more climbing this year, up from 800 metres to 1,900 metres of elevation gain, and the final climb is just 5km from the finish at Pieve di Soligo. There is also a lot of pavement mixed with gravel ‘sectors’ and not a true North American gravel grinder.
“That’s the main difference, you know, that you’re racing on gravel for pretty much the entirety of the event over here. It seems with the UCI events, there’s been more pavement and a different ‘style’.”
Swenson was keen to travel early to adjust to the time zone and to see the actual course conditions firsthand. He said the course would also help determine how Team USA would meld and form strategy. Last year 10-rider teams from Belgium and Italy rode as the main locomotives in the peloton, the two teams taking half of the top 10 spots, including 1-2 by Gianni Vermeersch for Belgium and Daniel Oss for Italy. The US was represented by just two elite men and Easter Griffin was the top finisher of the pair in 46th place.
“We still need to iron all that out, but it sounds like there’s a good handful of the guys who are willing to race as a team, which I think will be our greatest strength,” Swenson surmised about a large elite squad that could be as many as 15 riders.
“Once we’re over there, see the course and figure out where each individual might be most useful and how everyone can be a part of the squad. It's kind of hard to really nail down a plan until you can really get eyes on the course and get a feel for how to race.”
A start list was not available yet for Swenson to analyse his competition, but he wasn’t overly concerned just yet about ‘who else’ was in Italy for the 169km race. Only one name was mentioned, Wout van Aert (Belgium), who won his first-ever gravel race at Houffa Gravel in August.
“You know, going up against someone like Wout, if he is racing, and he’s one of the best in the world, it’s gonna be hard to beat him one on one. But I think if we had a team and we raced together, anything’s possible,” Swenson said.
“I just heard rumours like Wout’s [van Aert] racing and maybe there’s a couple of other WorldTour guys. In my opinion, those will be the biggest competition, along with a few guys who race gravel and maybe a couple of mountain bike racers. I’m kind of worried about myself. I feel like I don’t want to look at the start list until you get really close to the race. It is what it is. It’s better to worry about your own prep work and sort it out as you get closer.”
Crossover shift
Swenson was an obvious choice to take part in the inaugural UCI Gravel World Championships, but a little more than a month from the gravel contest, he was one of two elite men named to fill open spots on the roster for the Road World Championships in Wollongong, Australia.
“Last year, I was focused on just going to Road Worlds, and I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew. It would have been too much.”
Though an off-road specialist across mountain biking and gravel, Swenson was tapped by USA Cycling’s CEO Brendan Quirk because of “he has a World Tour engine; we know he’s not intimidated by anything or anyone”. At the end of the 266.9km Road Worlds contest, Swenson was the second-best placed men’s rider for Team USA, in a group 6:20 off the winning pace set by Remco Evenepoel.
Last year’s competition for the rainbow jersey on gravel turned into a full-on road race, and proved Quirk quite accurate about the phenomenon of “crossover riders diving in from other disciplines”, which he used to describe Swenson racing Road Worlds. This played out in reverse at the first UCI Gravel Worlds as nine of the top 10 finishers were road pros.
“The goal this year was to obviously win the Grand Prix, but it’s really nice to have it done. I just have to cross the start line and finish at Big Sugar. It’s nice to take the pressure off. It’s nice to not have any stress there and just be able to focus on World Championships.”
