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Within the crimson clay hills of the Texas panhandle on Saturday, Keegan Swenson and Sofia Gomez Villafañe led the way in which for victories within the open classes on the inaugural Valley of Tears. It was an enormous day for the small city of Turkey, Texas, as each the variety of individuals within the tiny city, estimated at 325 residents, and the prize purse, which began at $26,000 for elite athletes, doubled on race day.
Firstly line, organisers of Valley of Tears introduced the prize purse would increase to $52,000, and paid deeper from the highest 10 to the highest 20 for the lads’s and girls’s fields. The inflow of individuals for elite and age group racing pushed the variety of individuals within the city to over 1,000 for the first-year occasion.
Swenson rode solo for the lads’s victory over second-placed Chase Wark by over 5 minutes. Finn Gullickson took third from a four-rider bunch one other two minutes again, using forward of Brennan Wertz, Adam Roberge and Julien Gagne.
Villafañe out-kicked Jenna Rinehart on the line to safe the ladies’s victory. Emily Newsom rode solo for third, 1:38 off the tempo, after working again from mechanical points suffered in an early crash. That pileup within the sand precipitated contender Geerike Schreurs to withdraw as her handlebars snapped.
“What a cool day in Turkey TX! The inaugural Valley of Tears Gravel was subsequent degree. The course had all of it from loopy sand pits & tough path path to butter-smooth gravel roads,” Villafañe wrote in her post-race recap on Instagram, noting the native Pretty Household who contributed to the expanded prize cash.
“Large thanks to the Pretty household for all their exhausting work to make this occasion an important success and for altering the payout at the beginning line to go 20 deep! I’m nonetheless in shock that we had a gravel race of this degree at a $20 entry payment and a beautiful 10 am begin.”
A mass begin started on a chilly and sunny day for 115 miles throughout extensive open prairie land and 90% on filth roads sprinkled with sandy sections. The opening 15 miles of the course introduced dry sand beds, so deep and gnarly that riders needed to dismount and run. One of many first casualties was girls’s race favorite, Geerike Schreurs, who was caught in a mass pileup on a sandy part close to the Limestone Pits and needed to withdraw when her handlebars snapped.
Earlier than Schreurs’ crash, Newsom plowed right into a visitors cone, struggling a lower to her proper knee and shattering the suitable shifter on her bike, making her rear derailleur “ineffective”. With solely the entrance derailleur at her disposal, she powered on to catch Rinehart by mile 45 and shortly latched on to Villafañe. The three main girls have been a part of a 15-rider group.
“We hit the tough rails to trails, and seeing that the opposite two girls have been already enjoying a little bit of cat and mouse, I managed to get a niche and dug exhausting, delighted to really feel my physique responding so properly. I quickly gained a lead, however made my second large mistake of the day by lacking a flip. I used to be heartbroken, however settled in to regain the group that was now forward,” she defined on Instagram.
The headwind and rolling terrain proved an excessive amount of, and Villafañe and Rinehart stayed forward to battle in a wild west faceoff in Turkey, Villafañe taking the dash win.
On the lads’s facet, splits opened throughout the ten miles after the Limestone Pits, with Wark and Swenson alone on the entrance and chased by Wertz, Tobin Ortenblad and Gullickson, and a gaggle of 12 attempting to make the catch of the second group. Swenson and Wark labored collectively to increase their result in three minutes on the “Rails to Trails” and up the Caprock climb.
Wark mishandled an trade for provides within the feed zone and crashed, additionally taking down Swenson. Each remounted and rode on, nevertheless, the strap of Wark’s hydration backpack broke and left him with just one bottle for the remaining 60 miles, and Swenson sharing once in a while.
On the Tampico Tundra part of the course with the duo holding 5 minutes over the chasers, Swenson attacked and rode solo for the remaining 20 miles for the victory.
Swenson and Villafañe, winners of the 2023 Life Time Grand Prix, started their 2024 gravel marketing campaign with victories at Belgian Waffle Experience Arizona the primary weekend in March. Each will compete on the eight-stage Cape Epic, the cross-country mountain bike stage race held in South Africa from March 17-24.