Events are stepping on each other's toes, and athletes have to make tough choices about where to race. Does this mean gravel needs a governing body?
Too Many races..Too few weekends
Gravel racing has long thrived on its independence — a freewheeling escape from the rigid confines of UCI-regulated competition. But as the sport grows, that freedom is revealing its limitations — one of which is an increasingly crowded event calendar.
The 2025 racing season might be the best example of this limitation yet, with several high-profile races like SBT GRVL, Belgian Waffle Ride Montana, and the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder stacked on the same weekend and marquee series like the Life Time Grand Prix and Gravel Earth vying for participation on opposite ends of the globe.
The overlap of events highlights a new tension in gravel’s stereotypical ‘anything goes’ storyline. Whereas organizers used to have the run of the calendar, and riders could attend all the events they wanted, for some the new norm now involves making tough decisions.
It also begs other questions about the long-term feasibility of a sport with no centralized governing body.
Some riders say they’d appreciate more calculated coordination between big events like SBT GRVL and the Belgian Waffle Ride and series like the Life Time Grand Prix and Gravel Earth. Some race organizers say they would like the same.
“As an athlete I have to make a Google doc of every race that interests me or that is important,” said Pete Stetina, who is both a professional rider and an event promoter. “And then there are conflicts, so I have to evaluate the ask, the pros and cons, and all of it. It’s kind-of insane.”
Case study: June 28, 2025
There were a few years in gravel’s early heyday, say 2018 – 2021, where only a few events were considered ‘the big ones.’ It was totally feasible for a rider focused on the discipline to attend the Mid South, BWR California, Unbound, SBT GRVL, and Gravel Worlds without stress.
And while those races remain important to many riders, they’re now hemmed in the calendar by dozens of other events that carry equal weight.
Since 2022, we’ve seen the advent of multiple off-road race series, including the Life Time Grand Prix (LTGP), the Belgian Waffle Ride Tripel Crown, Gravel Earth, and the UCI Gravel World Series.
Many riders focused on one series say that the crunched calendar makes them less likely to consider races in another.
“They’re on back-to-back weekends and geographically far apart, which would make it tough to perform well at both,” said Lauren De Crescenzo, a professional who is focused on the LTGP but would like to consider Gravel Earth.
For Stetina, nothing illustrates the calendar chaos like the weekend of June 28, 2025.
For the past five years, the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder (OTGG) has been held the last week of June. The gravel stage race has always been a favorite among pros and amateurs, and last year it joined the Gravel Earth series, attracting a host of new riders and international talent. This year, it’s back as a marquee race in the series.
However, two other events are squatting on the Oregon Trail’s final weekend — the inaugural Belgian Waffle Ride Montana and the sixth edition of SBT GRVL.
For Stetina — and likely other riders — the three races were finalists on his Google doc of options. OTGG is a huge opportunity for US-based riders to get points in the Gravel Earth series. BWR Montana is the fourth race in the BWR Quadrupel Crown series, and SBT GRVL is, well, one of the biggest gravel races in the world.
Furthermore, riders often make their race calendars with bonus structures in mind. While many bike industry sponsors say that they don’t force their riders to attend certain races, they certainly sweeten the pot by making some more lucrative than others.
“We incentivize races based on the kind of exposure we think we’ll get from one of our athletes doing well,” said Barrett Brandon, co-CEO of Ventum Bikes. “We have a pretty set bonus schedule with three different tiers of money.”
For Stetina, the conflict forced a tough decision that ultimately saw SBT GRVL, the race linked to two of his biggest sponsors, come out on top. However, he wasn’t happy about it.
“All of those races are really important,” Stetina said. “I wonder if there could have been some courtesy, some heads up, to see if anyone could have pivoted.”
When the dates conflict, the tension rises
While gravel race organizers are a generally congenial bunch that respect what each other are doing, the changing landscape is bound to cause friction.
Chad Sperry, the owner of Breakaway Productions and the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder, said that when he learned that BWR Montana and SBT GRVL were both scheduled for the final weekend of the OTGG stage race, he was more disappointed than concerned.
“Ultimately we are focused on doing our thing and making our riders feel appreciated and supported, if that happens with 200 riders or 1000 riders,” he said. “I understand that each event is dealing with their own permit requirements and they must do what is best for their events in order to survive and thrive.”
For Amy Charity, the owner of SBT GRVL, changing the race’s date from mid-August to June 28 was a true act of survival. After two years of intense conflict with local landowners and county commissioners who threatened to shut the race down, Charity wasn’t given any options for 2025.
“There was no process,” she said. “The city and the county laid it out — if you want an event, you have to do it then. There was no looking at a gravel calendar in our situation. If they had said the first weekend of June, we would have been in conflict with Unbound and not had a choice.”
Charity said that she understands how date conflicts can have serious impacts on participation. Last year, Finland held its road championships the same weekend as FNLD GRVL, another of her events. Despite the fact that FNLD GRVL’s date was announced first, many riders opted for road nationals.
“It definitely cost us numbers,” she said.
For Michael Marckx, the founder of the Belgian Waffle Ride, being pitted against SBT GRVL is a cause for similar concern.
Marckx announced the date for the inaugural BWR Montana last October and said he was “perplexed” that Charity didn’t reach out to him before announcing later that SBT GRVL would be held on the same weekend.
“Why would you do that when you could have done it the weekend before so people could have considered doing both?” Marcxk said. “And maybe you could have conferred with us because maybe we could have moved ours?”
It’s unlikely that a centralized calendar — or even a conversation about one — will ever come to fruition, given the sheer number and geographic distribution of gravel races. But De Crescenzo has an idea for a start:
“As for a centralized gravel calendar, I’m not sure how feasible that is given the global nature of the sport and varying priorities among organizers,” she said, “But collaboration between series would be a step in the right direction.”
The power of strong brands and staying nimble
Although SBT GRVL is the only June 28 race that is officially sold out for 2025, Marckx and Sperry both said that registration is continuing apace for their events. Sperry has as many registrants now that he had last year, and some of gravel’s top talent will be in Oregon for the stage race.
The healthy numbers, despite the date conflicts, reflect each event’s strong brand, as well as the unwavering interest in high level gravel racing.
However, not all events would be able to weather the competition of a Steamboat or BWR on their race date.
Lost and Found, a beloved gravel event that debuted in 2014 in California’s Lost Sierra, experienced the issue firsthand.
In both 2021 and 2022, the event shared a date with Unbound Gravel, the most popular gravel race in the world. While registration numbers were reasonable during that time, the organizers knew they were losing potential riders to Unbound.
In fact, said Billy Sinkford, the communications director for the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, when Lost and Found moved its date to a few weeks after Unbound in 2023, the event saw a 10 percent uptick in entries. Furthermore, riders like Tobin Ortenblad and Yuri Hauswald, who Sinkford called ‘hometown heroes,’ were able to attend both Unbound and Lost and Found and meet all of their sponsor obligations.
Core4, an Iowa gravel race that launched in 2022, has spent the last two years hiding behind the shadows of SBT GRVL, whose mid-August date it shared. According to race director Alex Buhmeyer, growth was steady at 30 percent, but he still heard stories of people didn’t chose Core4 because they’d already committed to the Steamboat race.
Rather than fight the tide, Buhmeyer said that Core4 focused on what it could offer that Steamboat couldn’t.
“We continued to work really hard to make our event high quality and approachable for everyone both regionally in the Midwest along with a economical price point,” he said. “We did a lot of promoting in neighboring midwest states and larger cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City. And always taking care of the locals here in Iowa.”
After six years of involvement with Lost and Found, Sinkford has arrived at similar sentiment, even though the event isn’t in conflict with Unbound anymore. He wants to bring the focus back to the everyday participant who may be coming up from the city to camp for the weekend and push his or her limits on the bike rather than try and ride the hype wave of big events like Unbound and BWR.
“Yes there’s pointy end of the spear, and every year we’ve got a few pros coming to this race, but that’s 40 people and there are 1000 folks out there to have a great day,” he said. “That is where the growth needs to come from.”
While mid-size events like Core4 and Lost and Found, as well as even smaller events, may have found that the solution to the overcrowding is to lean into their own brand and target a less-demanding audience than professional cyclists, larger events and series have different priorities to consider.
For organizers like SBT GRVL, BWR, and Life Time, overlapping dates can impact turnout and financial stability. For professional racers, it means tough choices that may pit sponsorship obligations against season goals.
While the crowded gravel calendar may eventually force some organizers to collaborate, right now each event — and rider — is forced to navigate the chaos in its own way.
