{"id":500794,"date":"2026-02-24T10:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T10:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500794\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T10:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T10:40:08","slug":"romain-bardet-continues-to-demolish-gravel-field-including-spanish-legend-alejandro-valverde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500794\/","title":{"rendered":"Romain Bardet continues to demolish gravel field… including Spanish legend Alejandro Valverde!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following a successful road career which saw Romain Bardet<\/a> win five Grand Tour stages, a Tour de France polka dot jersey and even finish runner-up at the Grande Boucle, the 35-year-old Frenchman had his last dance on the home roads of Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 last summer. Following that, he’s taken a moment off the bicycle, only to return as a gravel challenger who sticks to what he knows the best; winning.<\/p>\n

Already in his baby-step races while still wearing the Picnic PostNL jersey in 2025, Bardet already won two UCI-sanctioned events and came close to becoming the French champion. The end of the year was marked by a slight upset of not-finishing the Gravel World Championships, however that didn’t take away from Bardet’s excitement for 2026.<\/p>\n

No longer bound with a road team, Bardet now flies through mud in the colors of Factor Racing – always with a big smile on his face.<\/p>\n


\nAnd there was a particular reason to be happy the past weekend after he finished the Castell\u00f3n Gravel Race<\/a>. After all, Bardet crossed the finish line first, with a comfortable lead of two minutes over a fellow ex-professional Mads W\u00fcrtz Schmidt. Dutchman Mathijs Loman completed the podium. Another interesting name finished 8 minutes down the result sheet – defending champion from Castell\u00f3n, Alejandro Valverde<\/a> crossed the line in 11th place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a successful road career which saw Romain Bardet win five Grand Tour stages, a Tour de France…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[192406,64,63,784,50514,176604,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-500794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-alejandro-valverde","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-cycling","12":"tag-gravel","13":"tag-romain-bardet","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}