Three Takeaways from the 2024 SBT GRVL Gravel Race

A Sunday gravel race means a rougher-than-normal Monday, but the SBT GRVL hangover should be mostly pleasant for the 3,000 riders who partook yesterday.

August 18 marked SBT GRVL’s fifth anniversary, and the Colorado gravel race continues to provide a full value experience to participants. Although this year saw organizers make some major changes to both the race courses and race-adjacent programming due to a year of conflict with a small group of rural residents, the spirit of SBT GRVL was alive and well in downtown Steamboat Springs all weekend.

From what we heard, riders enjoyed the new courses, which took in more remote and rugged terrain to the west and south of Steamboat Springs. Spirited racing at the front of the 125-mile Black course saw an unstoppable Keegan Swenson win his third SBT GRVL in a row, while another US gravel national champ, Lauren Stephens, won the race for the first time.

Nevertheless, as one of the biggest gravel races in the country, what happens at SBT GRVL also serves as a temperature check on the bigger picture of gravel racing. Here are a few key takeaways from beyond the racing in Steamboat Springs.

Pro women’s gravel racing is conflicted

When SBT GRVL owner Amy Charity co-founded the race five years ago, parity between the sexes was a primary concern. SBT GRVL debuted with a sizable prize purse, paid equally to men and women, which was virtually unheard of in gravel racing at the time. 30 percent female participation was the goal.

Yet, as gravel racing has rapidly changed from a grassroots activity with a small pointy end to one with an entire professional field, so have the definitions of what is fair and inclusive. Namely, women who race in the pro category have requested a separate start line at races with a deep enough field. Their goal? To race each other without men in the mix.

While organizer Life Time has switched from a mass start to separate male and female pro starts at the races in the Life Time Grand Prix series, Charity did not have a separate pro women’s start at SBT this year — and isn’t sure if she will in the future, either.

“Somebody said recently, ‘women deserve their own race,’” Charity said. “And it was like, ‘I had never considered it that way.’ I had felt the opposite, that it’s so great that we get to be on the same starting line.”

Races where pro women start at the same time as men look dramatically different from when they start together with a sizable gap between amateurs. Furthermore, absent of any rules governing drafting, women may race with any men, be them strangers, teammates, or even spouses. Lauren Stephens, who won SBT GRVL on Sunday, spent over half the race in a group of 5-10 men that included her husband Mat.

When women do race with men, their finish times much more spread out than if they were racing independently. At this year’s SBT GRVL, the time gap between the first man and 10th man to finish was 13 minutes while the gap between the first and tenth woman was nearly 40 minutes.

Although SBT GRVL did not have a women’s start, 60 elite women showed up to race in Steamboat Springs, many of those who have been outspoken about the need for separate starts at all marquee races. It will be interesting to see how women’s pro gravel racing continues to evolve, namely the approach that both riders and organizers will choose to address the issue of inconsistency at the start line.

Inclusivity efforts do not go unnoticed

Walk around the expo at SBT GRVL and you will see more riders of color, body size, age, and physical ability than at any other gravel race. This is no accident, as the race has prioritized inclusivity since its inception.

In 2021, SBT GRVL entered into its most longstanding advocacy partnership to date. SBT GRVL x Ride for Racial Justice (RFRJ) has now provided scholarship and resources to nearly 100 BIPOC riders who attend the race and also do work in their local communities. At SBT GRVL, RFRJ participants speak on a panel, describing how and why the partnership is so important.

Other groups like body-inclusivity group All Bodies on Bikes and Rahsaan Bahati’s Bahati Foundation, have also partnered with the SBT GRVL for the past three years. This year, Annijke Wade and Sam Summers debuted DirtBound, a para off-road cycling initiative, at SBT GRVL in the hopes that it too will become a stalwart partner.

In addition to the official partnerships between SBT GRVL and advocacy groups, the event has also become a place for cycling industry brands also choose to support their own partnerships with cycling advocacy groups. Hunt Bike Wheels, for example, brought riders from the New York City chapter of Black Girls Do Bike to Colorado this year.

After noticing that there wasn’t much support for juniors interested in racing gravel, SBT GRVL also launched an initiative to invite more kids to the bike race. This year saw 105 riders under the age of 18 tackle the 30, 60, and 100-mile courses. Colorado-based non-profit The Cycle Effect, an organization that works to provide young women equal opportunity and access to the sport of mountain biking, was the beneficiary of the Friday evening HLL CLMB.

Gravel races must tread lightly in their communities or risk cancelation

While race organizers have plenty to deal with on a good day — merchandise orders, sponsor relations, expo logistics, registration troubleshooting, etc — the past year brought hundreds of hours of additional work to the team at SBT GRVL.

After the 2023 event, a small but vocal group of rural Routt County residents complained that the event is both disruptive and disrespectful to the local agricultural community. The complaints were at times contentious, and Amy Charity and other SBT GRVL staff held multiple public listening groups to try and both gain an understanding and quell any misgivings that people had about the event.

The disgruntled residents seemed to want nothing short of the race being canceled.

Nevertheless, through the listening groups and other outreach with the local community, Charity and her team came up with myriad solutions to try and address the concerns. There were big changes at the race this year, notably new courses that steered clear of past troublesome locations and eliminated two-way cyclist traffic, as well as reduced pre-race programming on the rural roads outside of Steamboat Springs.

Additionally, all SBT GRVL riders were made aware of the situation in the community and asked to sign an oath, stating that they would “Respect the Routt” by obeying all traffic laws and respecting private property.

This year, SBT GRVL established a ‘command center’ hotline that residents and riders alike could contact during the weekend to report any egregious or unsafe behavior, and marketing director Ryan Steers said that the initial overall reception from the community has been positive. The hotline did not receive any calls in the days leading up to the event and then received 24 communications between Thursday and Sunday, reporting concerns like rider behavior and area impacts.

“With every call, we took immediate action with our team and partners to address each one,” he said. “We’re excited to gather more feedback in the coming weeks and learn how to get that call number down to zero in future years.”