After Success at Unbound, Should Other Races Implement Staggered Starts for Women? We Asked the Pros.

Before the 2024 edition of Unbound Gravel, there were a lot of questions on how the elite women’s race would play out. After Unbound Gravel, a new precedent had been set.

At the 2024 edition of the Kansas gravel race, organizers gave the elite women a staggered start time that they hoped would keep their race protected from male racers. Elite women started 15 minutes after the elite men and 25 minutes before all amateurs. The new format came in response to an increasingly loud chorus of female racers asking for a pure women’s race — one they say they don’t have when mixed with men.

The staggered start time proved to be sufficient to keep the fields separated for almost the first half of the race. For the women that did not make a mid-race selection that resulted in a lead group of 11, intermixing ensued. That lead group, however, would race together for the rest of the day. After 10.5 hours, the race was decided by a nine-up sprint, the biggest in Unbound history.

In the hours, days, and weeks after the race, it became clear that Unbound’s new start format was being considered a success by most of the women’s field, even those who didn’t make the selection and ended up working with men. With the bulk of the gravel season still remaining, the next question is what other organizers of large-scale races will do — and what female racers want them to.

Here’s what some of the elite women had to say.

What does the women’s race at Unbound mean for organizers of other big races like Belgian Waffle Ride, SBT GRVL, and the Mid South?

Haley Smith: Personally, after experiencing getting to actually race instead of the quasi-race thing we do when we’re mixed into the men’s field, I really don’t want to go back to the mass start way at these bigger and more important events. I’ve always liked the riding aspects of these gravel races, but the racing has always felt lacking and my experience at Unbound fully changed that.

Jenna Rinehart: I think Life Time is setting the standard and that all major gravel events should follow and have a separate women’s start going forward. Unbound was a leading example of how successful and exciting this can be for women’s racing.

Whitney Allison: Each race is unique — it is held in different areas of the country with their own requirements from their cities and counties and those solutions will also vary. I do think that Unbound’s success with the separate start is important but I do think that we need more data points of events doing something similar with different types of course, course conditions, field sizes and gaps. For example, what is the threshold of number of elite women when it makes the most sense to have a separate start? How do different time gaps work on windy courses? Is this just the elites that are separate or all women? That is a whole other conversation.

Anna Yamauchi: Kinda obvious, all organizers need to get on board. I think it’s important for ladies mid pack and back to have the opportunity to also have their own race, and learn and adapt to the new style of racing. I think it creates this distinct split where the top handful of ladies will get more and more experience while developing racers will continue potentially racing coed and hopping on men’s wheels instead of adapting and learning this new style of racing. These women will find themselves at the front of races hopefully in the future, but maybe with much less knowledge and experience of the women’s only racing tactics which are essential long term and the only way to make it to the top now. So yeah, women’s only racing through and through to develop and progress the sport as a whole!

Carolin Schiff: I think it’s great that more races now have a separate women start. Most of the races I did already have a separate start but the start is too close to the age group men and they are influencing our race.

Paige Onweller: I will never forget 2024 Unbound and what we experienced in that nine-up sprint this year. Riding with all females from start to end was very special as we collectively pushed our limits. It created a level of camaraderie and mutual respect that the women haven’t been given many experiences to have thus far. We got a taste of what it is like and we also showed the world we can put on one hell of a show if we are given the chance. So please give us a chance. At the end of the day, racing bikes is my full-time job. I’m just not willing to take certain risks for a position in a pack of several hundred male riders who haven’t been vetted in skill or ability or may be more reckless. Ultimately, having separate starts creates a much safer racing environment and this is why I am a strong advocate that events such as SBT and Mid South start looking at separate starts. It’s just not safe anymore.

Should all events be held to same standard? Why or why not?

Jenna Rinehart: Yes. In a race like Mid South that seems to be all about equality, the coverage of the women’s field felt anything but equal compared to the men’s and non binary coverage. I don’t think this is intentional by the race organizer but until the women get their own race it will be pretty challenging to give equal coverage as we get swarmed by the men and the gaps between riders get huge. You see this same thing at the BWR events as well.

I think going by field size would be appropriate. For example if there are at least 20 pro women registered then we get a separate start. This could help grow the women’s pro field at those events. I know I would personally seek out specific events that give a fair race to the women and allow for better coverage of our race and also feel so much safer at the start.

Lauren De Crescenzo: It’s hard to hold anyone to a standard, as the UCI does not regulate gravel. Life Time Fitness seems to be the best we can do… for now.

Until there is a regulating agency or consensus among the big races, and we can agree upon a standard, we must advocate for ourselves. I was part of an advisory group earlier in the year with Life Time and I’m part of a group refining the women’s race at Gravel Worlds. We can’t accept the status quo mass start. We need to speak up for what we want. The squeaky chain gets the chain lube.

Caroline Tory: I do think all events with a deep women’s pro field should be held to the same standard. The question is, what constitutes “deep”? I’m still unsure of a magic number, but perhaps if there are 40+ pro women registered, the organizers should either race the pro women on a separate day or create a separate women’s start with very large time gaps to the amateur field and elite men.

Haley Smith: I think smaller events that are more participation based can and should definitely remain as mass starts. But the BWRs and SBT GRVLs? I would be pretty thrilled to see a women’s start in a similar manner to what we had at Unbound.

Paige Onweller: Having separate starts only works when the depth of the women’s field is strong and has the numbers — 20-30+ riders, in my opinion. So firstly, event organizers need to create opportunities and attract women to race as the number one priority. Once an event has the depth in the women’s field, the next step is to create separate starts with enough gaps to both the pro and amateur fields — both of those male fields can impact our race. Those time gaps really hinge on the course details and early selections, mud potential, etc., but I would think 20-30 minutes is a strong enough gap. Ultimately, events should be doing research on historic times of both fields in the past to help determine this.

25 minutes was a sufficient gap at Unbound. Is that a good benchmark?

Jenna Rinehart: I think the time gap might need to be more course dependent. For example a big climbing course like Crusher in the Tushar probably doesn’t need 25 minutes like Unbound or a flatter race does.

Whitney Allison: I believe protecting “the front” is the most important and results outside of the top-10 are low priority, from a solutions perspective. We also need to give consideration to the up-and-comers who may not be able to stick with the front the entire day and I think it’s important that they have access to drafting to get home….the experience for riders has to be positive or at least neutral if we want women to make that leap to the elites.

Unfortunately/fortunately, we’re all involved in literally pioneering the sport, especially as it grows beyond the earliest grassrootiest days and that will have pain points along the way.

In short, more data points with separate starts, please! It’s also a solution that most events of all sizes and funding levels can implement.

Lauren De Crescenzo: Twenty-five minutes was still a huge improvement after last year’s 2-minute and 8-minute buffer. However, I can’t help but think with similar conditions to last year, would the 25-minute gap even matter?

This year’s weather and course conditions were perfect and they had to be perfect for the 25-minute gap to work out the way it did.

Isabel King: Going forward I hesitate to even think about how awesome BWR and SBT GRVL would be with our own start. Holy moly. Every race in my career so far has been to survive the first hour, don’t get crashed out by an overly aggressive amateur man. It would be so great to have a buffer between the pro men and the amateur men just so we could race each other. I don’t mind the mixing in later because at that point, the race is set. It’s more about teamwork to get to the finish. I think if there’s a good number of pro women 25 to 30 minutes works well.

Carolin Schiff: The gap at Unbound was also not very big and I was surprised that no men caught our group. I think it was also a motivation for our group to not get caught by the men. It was great that we managed to stay away from the age group. I never had it like that in another gravel race. In all the other races the men came from the back and our race was made by stronger men. We just tried to hang in and the women who did it best won.

Is a ‘no drafting’ rule still needed to ensure fairness? What would be the best case scenario for women’s racing moving forward?

Jenna Rinehart:  I think enforcing no drafting is possible even while racing with the other fields the same day. USA Cycling proved this can be done last year at gravel nationals. I think for a major event like Unbound moving all the pros to a separate day would be interesting and allow for the age group races to be able watch the race. I don’t think they should race just the women by themselves on a separate day; I think this would hurt viewership and interest for the women’s race.

Whitney Allison: Whenever I hear of solutions on the internet, the first thing I’m thinking about as both a professional athlete and event organizer is what it would actually take to implement that. Implementing a no drafting rule across a field that would get very spread out over a long course sounds like a very expensive, logistically challenging, and take a lot of people power to have extensive moto refs (sorry, pinky promises don’t work, this is why WADA exists).  Having an event on separate days doubles most of the costs and would put me 100 percent out of business.

Lauren De Crescenzo: The gold standard is a separate day. Until we can race on a separate day, the anti-drafting rule needs to be enforced or at least stated in the rules. Had there been an anti-drafting rule at Unbound, I wouldn’t have gone within 100 meters of a male competitor and it’s possible the race would’ve played out differently.

Paige Onweller: The best case scenario is implementing a no draft rule, which is enforced by motos out on course. It may not be perfect, but protecting the front of the race is a priority to ensure fair racing. I experienced this executed well at USAC gravel nationals last year, so I know it is possible to execute but certainty takes resources. For me, this should be the gold standard that events that deep/strong women’s elites field aspire to achieve. What’s important to remember is that we can’t get greedy with progress. “Getting it right” will likely take more time and more patience from both riders and event organizers. For me, I think that’s important is that events at least consider a change and be willing to try something new. The evolution of gravel can still make room for both pros and amateurs alike, but at the core of all decisions — safety should be the priority — not rigidity in keeping things the same. Why wouldn’t events want to support a safer event and empower women to have a more fair race at the same time?

Caroline Tory: I think racing the pro women on a separate day is still the “gold standard” for major events like Unbound, SBT, or BWR, and I would prefer this over a no-drafting rule. If not on a separate day, we need big time gaps. A lot of things can negate the time gap if conditions change, which we saw with the mud at Unbound in 2023 when the categories merged together in the first 15 miles. Though there was a massive improvement at Unbound 2024, the amateur men still caught pro women that fell off the front group about halfway through the race, and women also caught up to elite men who had dropped off. Ideally, the gaps would be even bigger so that the pro women further back can have a protected experience as well. A separate race day would solve this problem entirely.

I say all of this while understanding how big a burden this puts on event promoters who are managing thousands of participants and working so hard. Starting the pro women on a separate day is probably only feasible for the biggest, most well-resourced events with a large pro women’s field. Time gaps must create headaches since there are only so many hours in the day to get thousands of participants through a course. But I do think the biggest gravel events like Unbound, the other Life Time Grand Prix races, SBT, and BWR should strive for the separate race day for pro women or at a minimum, very large time gaps. Now that I’ve tasted the experience of racing in more of a true women’s gravel race, I will definitely be prioritizing events that offer this.

Isabel King: The idea of having us race on separate days has been thrown around a lot. I don’t like that idea because it takes away the beauty of this sport. Everyone races on the same course, in the same conditions. As soon as you make it separate days, it becomes like the WorldTour where there’s a GranFondo and a race. For more women to get into the sport, I believe there has to be an ability to show up and compete with the best without having the risk that you get dropped and end up having a terrible experience riding alone on some desolate farm roads for 7 hours.

Carolin Schiff: We have in most of the races a lot of strong women who compete so we should have a separate start with a bigger time gap to the men’s race. With this we don’t have the chaos we have in a mass start with men and we also don’t have the problem of men supporting women. It’s clear and the same for everybody.