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Talking with riders and organizers about the value, evolution, roadblocks, and future of America’s biggest off-road endurance series.
Life Time Grand Prix
Cast your mind back ten years. Ted King and Rebecca Rusch won the 2016 edition of Unbound Gravel. Those two names are about the only ones most of today’s gravel enthusiasts would recognize on the results sheet. Aero bars were still a norm. Gravel was still considered some combination of endurance and adventure riding. Professional gravel racing and the concept of privateers were not yet a thing. The best options for a career as a professional bike racer were road and XCO mountain biking, and spending quite a bit of time in Europe was a requirement.
Today, the landscape is different. It’s now possible to make a career out of gravel and marathon mountain bike racing in the United States. It’s not easy. Racers must be exceptionally fast, possess the business skills to negotiate with sponsors, and build a media presence.
That’s how fast the sport has changed. Gravel and mass participation events likely would have had a boom without Life Time, but the introduction of the Grand Prix ahead of the 2022 season fast-tracked the professional side of the sport.
Life Time talks about wanting to build a sustainable series in the wake of a declining road cycling landscape. They wanted to boost viewership and generate new fans of North American cycling.
“I think we’ve created something that’s given existing riders, but even more importantly younger riders, something to aspire to, something to look forward to,” said Kimo Seymour, President of Events and Media at Life Time and the man in charge of the Grand Prix.
I spoke to Seymour ahead of Big Sugar Gravel, the final round of this year’s series. As the Grand Prix concludes its fifth year, I wanted to look at where the series goes from here and explore some of the critiques that riders have as the series begins to move past its formative years.
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