Brendan Johnston (Giant Bikes) opened his third gravel season in the United States and took a win at the Utah Gravel Series opener, the Salty Lizard. He now builds toward the Life Time Grand Prix and in particular some big goals at Unbound Gravel.
The US gravel scene may once have delivered considerable learning but it hasn’t taken long for the Australian champion in the discipline to carve out success as a professional athlete after more than a decade of working as an electrician while still accumulating an impressive list of results in Australia.
“I went with intentions of staying there for more than one year and it was touch and go but I pulled it off towards the end of the first year and now I feel established,” Johnston told Cyclingnews in January after he won at South Australia’s RADL GRVL.
“I feel like I can continue to get better every year in that scene. I learn more and more every race.”
That is evident in his results, as he built through his first extended US season in 2023 to secure an overall seventh-place finish in the Life Time Grand Prix series and then topped that in 2024 with fourth.
“You know, I'm 33 and still learning about the races and and myself and it's nice to be still learning and still enjoying that part of the racing, still being able to improve,” said Johnston of the journey that he hoped will continue for some time.
“I think I've got a long future there, well I hope so anyway, at least three to five years or so, I think. The scene is good and it's something I want to be part of.”
Gravel is certainly a discipline that suits the Australian, providing the perfect meeting ground for his combined road and mountain bike strengths, with the latter also giving him an extra edge in the Grand Prix series, which includes both gravel and mountain bike events. His potential to thrive was clear from a combination of results that included a Melbourne to Warrnambool win on the road, Dirty Warrny victory and six Australian Marathon Mountain Bike titles. They were all clear indicators of his ability to tackle the longer gravel distances found in the US.
The pinnacle of those long-distance gravel races has been Unbound and Johnston is one of the many who want to make it to the summit. Luck didn't run his way in 2023, with Johnston one of the many victims of the equipment-destroying, peanut butter mud. And in 2024 he flatted out of the lead group, made it back, then got hit by two more flats and was stuck riding the inserts of an unrepairable tyre for a considerable period, yet still managed to cross the line in 15th.
The dream for 2025 is to make it two Australian winners in a row by following on from Lachlan Morton (EF Education-EasyPost), who claimed the 200-mile Kansas race victory in 2024.
“I've got a big focus on Unbound. I really want to win there and I think I can if I have the right preparation and build into it correctly," said Johnston.
He added, when we spoke to him in late January, straight after he won RADL GRVL, that "it's so far so good” and then he also went on to win the Otway Odyssey MTB Marathon in February.
That, however was just the beginning of the build into a race season which is now moving to its US leg, starting with the Salty Gravel victory to "open the legs" and then quickly moving to the Life Time Grand Prix opening round of Sea Otter Classic Gravel in Monterey, California on April 10. The 200-mile Unbound Gravel will then unfold on May 31.
“I had a slow, slow summer, the slowest I've had for many years, not doing Road Nationals etc, so it's been nice and I think I’m on of decent trajectory to maybe deliver come May, June."
