The American gravel scene has long been defined by its quest for more.
More miles of dirt, packed into more miles, with more people competing. Largely, this quest for more has been fruitful for the gravel side of the sport with Unbound, the biggest and baddest event of them all, is a full 200 miles with 99 percent of that distance over coarse gravel.
Other events have followed, packing more gravel into long days with even the likes of the formerly road bike-friendly BWR California adding chunkier off-road terrain to the mix this year.
All of this has me wondering: what if gravel racing needs more races with less gravel?
Recently, two developments have me doubling down on this idea: stage 9 of the Giro d’Italia and the success of Levi’s GranFondo earlier this spring.
With the miniature Strade Bianche as proof of what a frenzy a true all-road race can be, and Levi’s GranFondo as a test of the appeal of road riding to both the American professional scene and the general cycling public, it is time for the gravel wave to embrace less, at least sometimes.
Let me present my case:
The power of gravel restraint
The best starting point for the argument of tweaking the amount of gravel in gravel races is stage 9 of this year’s Giro d’Italia, especially if you compare it to this year’s WorldTour showcase at Strade Bianche.
On Sunday, the cycling world was consumed by the thrill of a knock-down, drag-out showdown on the white roads of Siena where Wout van Aert reversed his nearly man status that has plagued his year, and Isaac del Toro stormed into the general classification conversation.
It was high drama all because of mixing in a couple of technical dirt sections and punchy climbs that defined the day.
Unfortunately, Strade Bianche for the men this year paled in comparison to the spectacle from Sunday. The main culprit that caused this divide, beyond the absence of one Tadej Pogačar, is Strade Bianche’s own obsession with more.
Wout van Aert has stage wins at all three Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, and Vuelta a España) pic.twitter.com/V52EusijI4
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) May 18, 2025
In 2024 the organizers added a second lap of the finale, extending the race over 200km and adding more to the already delectable race that was quickly rising through the ranks of cycling’s one-day classics.
What has resulted has been the opposite: bigger gaps between riders, Pogačar’s ultimate supremacy, and a race that has skewed too far towards the climbs. This particularly sticks out compared to years past, where riders like Fabian Cancellara, Zdeněk Štybar, and Mathieu van der Poel have triumphed.
The battle on Sunday between Van Aert, who won the older iteration of Strade Bianche in 2020, and Del Toro, who is more of a climber than a man for the classics, immediately brought back visions of the bygone Strade Bianche, where less was very much more in terms of entertainment.
While the demands and machinations of WorldTour racing are very different from the racing is here in the United States, the less-is-more dynamic can still be applied.
Compelling racing often demands a push and a pull that opens the race to tactics and increases the number of potential winners. When the event seeks out more of some element, whether it be gravel, climbs or distance, that balance can be knocked out of place.
Now, that’s not to say gravel should be uniformly shorter, smoother, and easier. Unbound, for instance, would be diluted and ineffective if it was shorter or had less gravel.
But for other races with less of an identity or more climbing, this might be the case to create compelling sporting products.
Is racing on tarmac so bad?
One big reason why there has been this proliferation of more gravel in gravel races is a sneaking suspicion that racers writ large like events that have a higher percentage of off-road racing. Generally, in American participatory events, there has been this fixation on the gravel discipline, maximizing the adventure and minimizing time on tarmac.
For the most part, this emphasis on maximizing dirt time has matched the demand.
Many folks in the gravel community will cite a race’s time spent on gravel roads as a draw. Yet, maybe these people don’t know what they are missing with what tarmac can bring to certain races in certain places. What’s more, with the increasing stature of tarmac events like Levi’s GranFondo, perhaps that group of riders who ride or die on maximizing dirt time is shrinking.
Levi’s GranFondo, for those who might not know, is a gran fondo put on by former professional road cyclist Levi Leipheimer that takes on the tarmac roads of his home terrain around Windsor, California.
The gran fondo has grown over the last two years as Leipheimer has added a pair of big-money professional road races to the weekend with the 130-mile Growler bringing talent from the domestic road, gravel and mountain bike scene to the twisty roads of Northern California.
The Traka may have started in just 2021, but it has quickly become one of the go-to gravel races in the world, and Europe’s answer to Unbound Gravel. See bikes from Sofia Gomez Vilafañe, Simen Nordahl Svendsen, and even an Omnium cargo race bike: https://t.co/2jKrPjJzX9 pic.twitter.com/sJRLRd9JD0
— Velo (@velovelovelo__) May 5, 2025
This year, the race resulted in a buzz that was palpable. Significant cash was handed out with a massive prize purse of $156,000 offered this year, while a live stream beamed the images of the race out to the public, and the winners, Keegan Swenson and Lauren Stephens, are two of the best names racing any type of bike in the United States.
Competitively, Levi’s was also significant in bringing the domestic road peloton and off-road peloton together. If the United States is going to have a domestic professional scene, more collaboration between these two sides is essential.
All of that was aided by a few thousand other riders who took on the challenge of the gran fondo, without a shot at the cash and with a hefty registration fee, making Levi’s GranFondo a huge testament to the idea that maybe the gravel boom doesn’t have to be tied to maximizing time on gravel at the expense of the maximizing an area’s available terrain.
More than anything, having races that are less tied to packing as much dirt into a course unlocks the possibility of quality over quantity, especially in places where the paved roads can be a draw outside of what gravel roads can offer: a splash of intrigue.
Under-rated races where less is more
The less-is-more approach to gravel is not unheard of in U.S. racing.
Across the country, races that have pre-dated the gravel boom around the pandemic are flying the flag of what could be, if we looked at adding more road elements to gravel. One of the first events that comes to mind is Rouge Roubaix in Louisiana.
Rouge is a mixed surface race, modeled after the famed Paris-Roubaix, that runs between Southern Louisiana and Mississippi around the bluffs, hills and bayous around the Mississippi River. The race takes place right at the start of March and ushers in spring to the North American calendar with bright flowers, gorgeous light green buds on massive southern trees, and fast first roads that are spread through a course that doesn’t shy away from quiet paved roads.
The result is a fantastically fun race that highlights a very different slice of the country that could appeal to so many different types of riders.
In the fastest finish time in event history, Lachlan Morton takes the victory in 9:11:47. Chad Haga finishes 2nd in a sprint, joining Lachlan in the history books with the second fastest time, 9:11:48. In a sprint for third, Tobias Kongstad bests Piotr Havik. pic.twitter.com/sNm83VHlFX
— UNBOUND Gravel (@unboundgravel) June 1, 2024
What’s more, a road bike, gravel bike, or all-road bike could be the right call for the day, depending on what you want to get out of the day.
Rouge Roubaix is one of many races that fit a similar mold, but with a history that dates back to 1999, the race is a shining example shows how enduring these races can be.
And while the calendar is chock full of great events, also consider the success of Stage 9, Levi’s Gran Fondo, and the example of Rouge Roubaix.
With those points to go off of, maybe more events can be emboldened to bring back some tarmac and foster a major race calendar that is less dependent on maximizing the amount of the rough stuff.
The sport might be better for it.