It promises to be a very busy weekend with chances to qualify for the 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships in Kenya, Canada and France.
The weekend starts with the Safari Gravel Race in Kenya in the hell’s Gate National Park in Naivasha. The 90% gravel course including the Pride Rock of the “Lion King” movie is 123km long and challenging with beautiful sceneries at al altitude between 1650m and 2840m above sea level. Total elevation is a hard 2680m. Amongst the participants a few great names like Chad Haga, Fred Ovett, Lawrence Naesen, Mattia De Marchi and on the women’s side Madeleine Nutt and Sarah Sturm.
Also on Saturday, the second edition of the Blue Mountains Gravel Fondo is challenging with a start at the Osier Bluff Ski Club for a 120km course and 1309m of elevation for the young categories containing a start and finish loop and three local laps of 36.5km. The men over 60 and women over 50 skip the last loop to go back to the finish for a race distance of 83km. Devon Clarke, Raylyn Nuss and Laura King are the female favourites while Joe Laverick wants to do better after his mechanical of last year. His main opponents are Ben Perry, Bryan Chavez, Daniel Bonello and Andrew Lydic.
The French qualifier event in Millau under the famous viaduct was the first ever European event in the UCI Gravel World Series back in 2022 and has a 145km course with 2700m of elevation for the young riders while the oldest age groups finish with a shortcut after 101km and 1800m of elevation. The race has almost 900 riders from 20 different countries at the start. Amongst them last year’s winner Toby Perry and 2022 winner Niki Terpstra, but also Piotr Havik, Paul Voss, Nathan Haas, Jasper Ockeloen, Tao Quéméré and Hugo Drechou. On the women’s side we see Rosa Kloser, Carolin Schiff and Jade Treffeisen as main favourites.
