Missing Unbound? Unthinkable to most gravel pros. Unless you’re Alexey Vermeulen trying to qualify for the Olympics.

 Alexey Vermeulen is very good at compartmentalizing.

The 29-year-old professional gravel cyclist says he has to be, especially with modern-day off-road bike racing, where the season is long and the variables are, well, variable.

This year especially is testing Vermeulen’s ability to plan ahead (just not too far ahead). Last year, when his brother Rem announced his June 1 wedding, Vermeulen had to take a deep breath. That is also the date of Unbound Gravel, arguably the most important gravel race on the calendar and also a crucial piece of the Life Time Grand Prix series, which runs from April to October. So, he inhaled deeply and started to plan around it. He did not know then that skipping the big bike race in Kansas’ Flint Hills would open up him up to another opportunity — a once-in-a-lifetime 

Vermeulen’s first order of business in 2024 was to get a top-five finish at the Fuego XL at Sea Otter in mid-April. This would give him a good cushion in the Grand Prix standings, knowing he would be missing Unbound and have only one other result to drop in the seven-race series.

His other goal for the early season was to make a real run at the individual time trial title at USA Cycling’s Pro Road Nationals. Vermeulen has raced the event many times before and has silver and bronze medals from 2015 and 2016.

The past two years, however, have seen him falling short on the results sheet at nationals, namely as a result of trying to cram in too much as a result of the busy gravel schedule.

In 2022 and ’23, US road nationals took place after Unbound and before Crusher in the Tushar, which is the third race in the Life Time Grand Prix. Trying to do well at all three didn’t work out so well for Vermeulen.

“I was absolutely crushed before Crusher,” he said. “I suffered though on my hands and knees after Unbound and then trying to build to nationals.”

With this year’s national championships in mid May and his brother’s wedding on June 1, Vermeulen thought it could be the year to make a valiant effort for the stars and stripes jersey. In fact, he’s built his entire early-season training plan around it, despite his ambitious Sea Otter goal (which, by the way, he achieved with an immaculate run to second place, finishing less than one minute behind Keegan Swenson).

So, how has Vermeulen been training for the time trial even with the mid-October finish of the Grand Prix looming six months in front of him?

“Every single hard workout I’ve done has has been on the TT bike,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I’m sacrificing anything, just doing a bit of a different workout. Anytime I have Vo2 or threshold it’s in the position or on the bike. Then, it’s building on that for the endurance stuff. Maybe I’d go out for another two hours or something. I haven’t done a ride over six hours yet this year.”

Physical training is one thing, and it’s the thing that most athletes thrive at. The mental game is harder, which makes Vermeulen’s ability to compartmentalize that much more impressive. His brother’s wedding isn’t the only complicating ‘life’ factor of the season for Vermeulen; he’s dealing with the fact that his partner Sophie [Linn], who is a professional triathlete, might qualify for the Paris Olympics. Going to Europe to watch her would throw a wrench into Vermeulen’s Leadville Trail 100 prep.

And then there’s the fact that Vermeulen could be competing in Paris, too.

When Vermeulen decided last fall to race the 2024 individual time trial at nationals, he didn’t know that the winner would automatically qualify for the Paris games. When he found out, it upped the ante a bit.

“This whole thing all started with the lack of doing Unbound,” Vermeulen said. “It got even more exciting when USAC announced there was an Olympics spot.”

Vermeulen has been racing bikes since he was a teenager and even spent two seasons on the LottoNL – Jumbo WorldTour team. He’s been to world championships but never the Olympics. In fact, he was resigned to the fact that he left that opportunity behind when he left the road.

“The Olympics is something that, when I wrote down the pros and cons of leaving road racing, I thought I had left behind. I didn’t think there was a pathway from where we are now.”

“Where we are now” being the professional gravel circuit, which until the debut of the UCI Gravel World Championships in 2022, didn’t have much of a pathway toward anything on the global stage. Even still, many of the US’ top gravel pros aren’t sure that a world championship is the end goal.

Vermeulen admits that if he weren’t missing Unbound this year, he would “probably” race nationals and only “maybe” the time trial. Despite the fact that many of the country’s best gravel talent could easily do what Vermeulen has been doing — training for the national TT race instead of Unbound — it turns out that ‘would you rather race Unbound or go to the Olympics’ doesn’t yield the answer one would think.

If it was that obvious, Vermeulen said, you-know-who would be in Charleston, WV at nationals this week.

“If Keegan [Swenson] saw this opportunity as better than or equal to Unbound, he’d be there.”

Vermeulen is up against some of the US’ top road talent at nationals, including reigning TT champ Brandon McNulty, as well as EF’s Neilson Powless. He knows a win in West Virginia is a long shot, although perhaps not as long as people may think.

“I think I can beat a lot of people although I don’t know if I could beat [McNulty] on my best day, given what he’s been doing,” Vermeulen said.

Nevertheless, given Vermeulen’s mindset, which is based on the unique reality of his life this year, a time trial title isn’t a pipe dream. Nor then, is a trip to the Olympics.

Call it compartmentalizing or call it ‘going with the flow,’ either way it’s Vermeulen’s approach. And hopefully on race day, he’ll reap the reward.

“The river never flows both ways at the same time,” he said. “It’s all very exciting and also very nerve-wracking.”