This 12 months’s inaugural Gravel Burn level race isn’t just the most important match of its sort at the calendar, it additionally boasts a mammoth $150,000 (£121,400) prize handbag that places it at the map earlier than a pedal has been became.
It’s, if truth be told, the most important single-race gravel handbag that has ever been presented.
The 850km, seven-stage match takes position for the primary time this 12 months in South Africa, from October 26 to November 1. The development, which additionally options 11,000 metres of hiking alongside its period, expects to draw one of the crucial perfect riders within the recreation to the big-money elite class. Certainly, 2021 Milan-San Remo winner Jasper Stuyven has already been recruited.
Then again, it’s open to all, with age staff racing catering to non-elites.
South African rider Matt Beers, who gained the closing 12 months’s Belgian Waffle Journey, stated that Gravel Burn and its massive prize listing was once a sport changer.
“This changes everything,” Beers said on the Gravel Burn website. “Gravel Burn is putting the focus on stage-racing in the gravel category. A prize purse of this magnitude shows how serious gravel cycling has become.”
He added: “It’s a big step toward further professionalising the discipline and giving it the recognition it deserves. It will also motivate international gravel racers, especially from the US, to come to South Africa to compete.”
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Gravel Burn is administered via Kevin Vermaak, who additionally based the Cape Epic mountain motorcycle race again in 2004. The massively a success eight-stage race has put South African mountain motorcycle racing at the map. Now Vermaak desires to do the similar with gravel racing.
“I believe gravel biking in South Africa is now at about the place where mountain biking was 20 years ago,’ he says. ‘It is growing exponentially in Europe and the United States, both among professional and amateur riders, and we think the timing is perfect for a major, long-distance, full-service pro-am gravel race.”
The large prize fund has it seems that been made conceivable because of a multi-year sponsorship deal, main points of which shall be printed on February 13.
The Gravel Burn starts on the the town of Knysna on South Africa’s south coast, taking competition into the semi-desert internal of the Nice Karoo earlier than looping again southwards in opposition to the coast. Riders will camp each and every evening in provided tents.
Entries at the moment are open at the match site.
