It isn’t simply the sealed roads round South Australia that can host racing this January with the Tour Down Underneath, however there’s firm with a brand new gravel race, RADL GRVL, set to happen.
The occasion is co- based by professional bike owner Tiffany Cromwell (Canyon-SRAM), F1 driver Valterri Bottas together with GRVL Occasions, organisers of SBT GRVL in Colorado and FNLD GRVL in Finland. RADL GRVL will run from January 18 to January 20, with the professional races, a pilot occasion for 250 riders, set for 131.5 km and 1,791 metres of elevation achieve on the nineteenth. There’s a $10,000 AUD prize purse to be cut up evenly between the highest three professional women and men.
“I’ve spent years racing professionally, and the unpaved roads round my hometown of Adelaide are the explanation I fell in love with gravel biking,” Cromwell stated. “I’m wanting ahead to bringing RADL GRVL to McLaren Vale at Santos Tour Down Underneath this January and displaying riders from round Australia and past what makes the using, surroundings, and hospitality in South Australia so particular.”
South Australia has a wealth of scenic gravel roads to select from starting from winding tracks within the Adelaide hills, to sandy coastal routes and lengthy trails slicing by way of the forest.
After an off-the-cuff shake-out experience on January 19, the aggressive divisions of RADL GRVL take off on Friday by way of the area of McLaren Vale throughout the gravel roads of South Australian wine nation, a remaining route but to be confirmed for the inaugural occasion. Saturday a post-race, shake-down experience will start on the Santos Tour Down Underneath Village and end with a watch social gathering on Willunga Hill for the stage 5 of the Tour Down Underneath.
The brand new gravel occasion was positioned on the calendar to correspond with the Girls’s WorldTour and WorldTour races. The Santos Tour Down Underneath is going down in Adelaide and regional South Australia from January 12-21, 2024, 9 days of elite racing for women and men.
RADL GRVL is the second occasion the place GRVL Occasions have partnered with Girls’s WorldTour skilled and common gravel racer Cromwell and her associate Bottas. They each competed at 2022 SBT GRVL, the place Cromwell received the ladies’s division on the 100-mile blue course girls’s division and Bottas received his age class on the crimson course, 60 miles.
Collectively they launched FNLD GRVL in Lahti, Finland this yr, which delivered a powerful area, together with Unbound Gravel 200 girls’s winner Carolin Schiff and second-placed males’s rider Petr Vakoc. Cromwell received the ladies’s race whereas Trek-Segafredo rider Toms Skujins received the lads’s race.
“Final June I had the possibility to introduce the gravel biking group to the using round my hometown of Lahti, Finland at FNLD GRVL, and this yr I’m excited that Tiffany will get to do the identical round her yard of South Australia,” Bottas stated.
“I’ve loved some very memorable gravel rides round Adelaide and McLaren Vale over the previous few years, so when the chance arose to convey an occasion to the realm I used to be absolutely dedicated.”
RADL GRVL organisers are usually not solely wanting so as to add one other gravel racing choice for the highest gravel opponents but in addition one other venue for leisure riders that flock to South Australia in January, for them to get out and discover the area on their bikes.
Gravel racing has been constructing momentum in Australia. It has grown from the small grass roots native occasions from many years in the past and now consists of two UCI Gravel World Sequence rounds, a nationwide gravel championships which has been working since 2018, plus a myriad of different occasions, together with a gravel model of the long-running Melbourne to Warrnambool highway race – referred to as the Soiled Warrny. The UCI Gravel World Championships will even be held in Nannup, Western Australia in 2026.
The nation’s solely top-tier tour has lengthy had a heavy give attention to offering using, in addition to race viewing, alternatives with scores of leisure riders heading off from the occasion village every morning and a carpark climb and Willunga Hill time trial among the many choices this yr, in addition to the brand new gravel occasion.