The 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships race course has been revealed, and is now out there for followers to trip pre-event.
After beginning in Halle, a captivating city 15 kilometers southwest of Brussels, the course will wind across the forested area referred to as Brabantse Wouden and end in Leuven. This similar area beforehand hosted the UCI Highway World Championships and the European Gravel Championships.
Now in its third yr, the UCI Gravel World Championships up to now have eschewed the lengthy distances popularized by American gravel races, and the routes for the 2024 occasion aren’t any totally different, with the elite girls’s discipline tackling 133 kilometers on Saturday, October fifth, and the elite males masking 179 kilometers the next day.
In comparison with the 200-320 kilometers U.S. race, these distances are quite brief certainly. However the place it lacks in distances, it makes up for in punchy climbs and slender, twisty-turny paths.
The 2024 UCI Gravel World Championship course
(Picture credit score: RWGPS)
Organizers of the 2024 race right this moment launched a GPX file of the anticipated course, inviting fanatics to discover and benefit from the route earlier than the professionals get their flip. This route follows 97% of the World Championship race course, which on race day, will probably be closed to automobiles. Within the meantime, slight modifications needed to be made for security causes because the roads are open to automobiles and different customers.
Gravel, cobblestones, and unpaved surfaces make up 56% of the route, many sections of which have been beforehand featured within the 2023 European Gravel Championship, gained by Classics specialist Jasper Stuyven (Belgium) and sprinter Lorena Wiebes (The Netherlands). The paved sections will even be acquainted for some because the 2021 UCI Highway World Championships befell in the identical area, touring between Antwerpen and Leuven. This Classics-style race was gained in a dash by Elisa Balsamo (Italy) within the girls’s race and by Julian Alaphilippe (France) who entered the end solo within the males’s occasion.
After leaving the beginning in Halle, the peloton will full a small native loop earlier than heading east by means of the Forests of Brabant, which begins with a pitch run up the Krekelenberg. The Forests of Brabant is a community of forests and inexperienced areas all through Flemish Brabant, characterised by its tall timber, worn and sunken roads, and heathlands.
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Because the course nears its end in Leuven, the peloton will full one other native loop—one or two, relying on the race class—earlier than ending within the metropolis middle. The course tackles some 1,000 meters (3280ft) of pitchy climbing.
Earlier editions:
(Picture credit score: Canyon-SRAM)
The earlier two editions of the UCI Gravel World Championships befell in Italy, and the placement, shorter distances, and totally different fashion of racing have largely favored European WorldTour racers accustomed to the excessive tempo and bumping elbows on slender paths.
The earlier editions have been gained by WorldTour roadies Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland) and Matej Mohorič (Slovenia) in 2023, and multi-discipline riders Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (France) and Gianni Vermeersch (Belgium) in 2022.
Qualification:
Mahoric wins the 2023 UCI Gravel World Championships
(Picture credit score: © SWpix.com)
As with the earlier two editions, newbie riders —together with skilled race automobile drivers— can qualify by ending within the high 25% at one of many 25 occasions on the Trek UCI Gravel World Collection all year long. Qualifying races are held throughout the globe, together with in Kenya, Poland, Canada, Switzerland, and the U.S. from April by means of September. For the elite race, nationwide biking federations are given 20 areas for his or her finest women and men elite racers.
