With the most highly anticipated new gravel race ever having kicked off, I figured a race discussion thread may be a good idea. Especially since some of you are actually racing out there. (I’d really be curious if we could get some impressions from on the ground. @wade_wallace)
In case you need to get up to speed on the pro race, I point you to my preview newsletter.
The organizers told me we should expect daily 25-minute recap videos of the action and extensive social media coverage. (They don’t do live coverage as StarLink is apparently illegal in SA. How does Cape Epic get their signal out?). So we’ll have stuff to talk about.
Stage 1 and 2 of Gravel Burn are in the book. The pro men just finished stage 2 five minutes ago as of the time of writing these lines). I’ll cover day 1 in here and follow up on stage 2 in a later note.
Stage 1 was a proper rain and mud fest. The official daily recap video has dropped overnight. You can watch it here:
Let’s take a quick look at the results first:
Women
Axelle Dubaut-Prévot
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio +00:01
Hayley Preen +01:46
Melisa Rollins +01:46
Haley Smith +06:36
Olivia Hottinger +07:01
Lauren Stephens +07:01
Clara Koppenburg +09:00
Sophie Wright +12:17
Theresa Rindler-Bachl +15:30
Men
Matt Beers
Andri Frischknecht +00:01
Hugo Drechou +00:01
Tristan Nortje +00:48
Simon Pellaud +00:49
Griffin Easter +00:58
Andreas Seewald +00:59
Mattia De Marchi +01:00
Travis Stedman +01:10
Lodewyk Wilhelm Goosen +01:16
GC is identical to the stage results.
Thoughts and Takeaways
First things first, don’t look at these time gaps with your road racing brain. Even though the stages are relatively short (on the men’s side, the first stages both took the winners less than three hours), it’s no problem at all in a gravel race like that to lose 5 or more minutes in a stage.
From a gravel-first fan perspective, I’m extremely stoked to see Axelle up there, beating decorated WorldTour pro and South African cycling legend Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio to the line. You can listen to Axelle’s recap over on Payson’s podcast, where you will find daily stage recaps: Spotify
In the episode, Axelle states that she came to have a nice holiday experience. Thanks to the bad weather, her motivation at the start line was allegedly pretty low. Luckily, she ended up letting her competitive spirit take over.
In the women’s race, plenty of the names I expected to be there were there or thereabout. Of my 9 original picks, you find 7 in the top 10. The biggest surprise in the top 10, to me, is Olivia Hottinger, a Swiss rider who I frankly didn’t know (according to her PCS profile, she was 5th at the Utopia Gravel Fest earlier this year, so I likely have read her name, but that’s about it).
If Matt Beers climbs (with) the best (of them), I don’t see anyone beating him, if he can avoid bad mechanicals and injury. Also, 3rd-place finisher Hugo Drechou was on with his partner Axelle in Payson’s pod I linked to above. In there, he mentioned that many of the South African and other Specialized riders rode for Matt Beers. He has established himself as the runaway favorite, especially because…
… Tom Pidcock is having a chill tourist experience out there. On stage 1, he finished 30 minutes behind Beers and, without giving too much away, as of writing this, he has not yet finished stage 2 and was 55 minutes behind the leaders at the 80 km check point. Let’s see if he’ll go for a stage, but alas, he did not come to race. It may be understandable from his perspective, but it’s a shame for us fans.
Also, it looks much worse for my picks on the men’s side. After stage 1, only 3 of my 9 picks were in the top 10. Of course, there’s a lot of racing to come, and stage races are usually not won on the first day, but some bids for the overall certainly took a hit.
That said, the gaps on the men’s side were pretty small compared to the women. 17th placed Lukas Pöstlberger was 3:10 back on Beers, and 20th place finisher Rudi Koen was the first rider with a gap of more than 10 minutes.
I originally posted this as a note on The Gravel Stack Substack
Ignoring discussion board etiquette, I’ll triple-post in order to, at least, keep this thread up-to-date with today’s results. Then, it’s up to the rest of you to chime in
First, let’s look at the results of stage 2 and what they mean for the overall:
Women
Stage 2 Results
Axelle Dubau-Prevot
Melisa Rollins +00:00
Haley Smith +00:05
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio +00:12
Lauren Stephens +00:17
Hayley Preen +00:21
Olivia Hottinger +01:06
Whitney Allison +02:06
Clara Koppenburg +06:59
Theresa Rindler-Bachl +08:37
GC Standings
Axelle Dubau-Prevot
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio +00:13
Melisa Rollins +01:46
Hayley Preen +02:07
Haley Smith +06:41
Lauren Stephens +07:18
Olivia Hottinger +08:07
Clara Koppenburg +15:59
Whitney Allison +22:37
Theresa Rindler-Bachl +24:07
Men
Stage 2 Results
Matthew Beers
Lukas Baum +00:01
Simon Pellaud +00:14
Lawrence Naesen +03:42
Marco Willie Joubert +03:42
Tristan Nortje +03:43
Luis Neff +03:47
Travis Stedman +03:48
Mattia De Marchi +03:48
Griffin Easter +03:55
GC Standings
Matthew Beers
Simon Pellaud +01:03
Lukas Baum +01:48
Hugo Drechou +03:59
Tristan Nortje +04:31
Mattia De Marchi +04:48
Griffin Easter +04:53
Travis Stedman +04:58
Andreas Seewald +05:04
Marco Willie Joubert +05:28
And just for funsies, let’s start the
Tom Pidock Tracker
Tom Pidcock +01:40:28
(I’ve heard he made a fake attack on a climb 3 km into the race today, before dropping back and stating he’s on vacation; also, he apparently sleeps in a tent, not a camper.)
Thoughts & Takeaways
This stage, which I described as a “transition stage” in my preview, catered to the big engines as it involved significantly less climbing than yesterday’s stage. But in combination, the two stages give us a pretty good idea of who has a shot at the overall. In that sense, it is rather significant that…
We got back-to-back winners in both fields (do you remember the weird duality of men’s and women’s gravel I wrote about before?). Matt Beers keeps looking like the one to beat, and Axelle Dubau-Prévot clearly seems to have canceled her holidays…
On the men’s side, Lukas Baum and Simon Pellaud were the only guys able to stay in Matt Beer’s proximity today. With less than 2 minutes of a gap on him in GC, they are by no means out of the game, though it sure looks like Beer’s would need some misfortune.
I’m curious to find out more about Hugo Drechou’s day. After yesterday’s great performance, I wonder if today’s 4-minute loss was the result of legs, tactics, or a mechanical.
So far, Hugo, Mattia De Marchi, and Griffin Easter appear to be the biggest omissions in my picks. If I had done “honorable mentions”, I would have had Hugo there. He was the last rider I crossed off my list. I didn’t give a lot of consideration to the other two for various reasons. But seeing them up there is certainly dope from a gravel-first fan perspective.
In the women’s race, it seems like a larger group rode into the finale together and, according to an Instagram post, ADP apparently came from behind to take the win from Melisa Rollins.
“The Shallot”, the short but rough and steep ramp in the earlier part of the day, turned out to be a tough little hike-a-bike section that splintered the women’s field, judging by this footage:
I originally posted this as a note on The Gravel Stack Substack.
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