VIDEO: The 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships
Posted by Sam Gross on 18th Oct 2024
VIDEO: The 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships
Follow Ventum Athletes Lauren Stephens and John Borstalmann
as they take on the best gravel racers in the world.
The United States may be the home of gravel cycling, but for one weekend this fall Belgium was the center of the gravel racing universe.
Flanders played host to the 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships, bringing the uniquely American cycling discipline to some of the most storied cobbled streets and gravel lanes in the history of cycling.
Ventum athletes Lauren Stephens and John Borstelmann were among the American contingent sent to Belgium to represent Team USA. Lauren, the two-time US gravel national champion, and John, who secured his spot through a stellar second place in the men's national championship race, landed in Flanders to chase glory and rub elbows with some of the best bike racers in the world.
With the help of our friends at 4SeasonCollective, we captured Lauren and John's trip to Europe and followed along as they took on the 2024 UCI Gravel World Championship.
Lauren's a veteran of the European peloton who was fresh off representing Team USA at the UCI Road World Championships in Zurich. It's been a banner year for the Texan, who over the summer won a number of prestigious gravel races including SBT GRVL, Garmin Gravel Worlds, and defended her title at the US Gravel National Championships.
“Every time I arrive in Belgium, I just feel like it’s where I belong. Having the opportunity to race a world championship is special, and getting to do it in Belgium makes it unforgettable. No other place in the world loves cycling like Belgium does!”
- Lauren Stephens
Even with all the success on US soil, Lauren was still hungry to return to Europe.
“Every time I arrive in Belgium, I just feel like it’s where I belong. Having the opportunity to race a world championship is special, and getting to do it in Belgium makes it unforgettable. No other place in the world loves cycling like Belgium does!”
For John, the 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships was his first European racing trip.
John secured his spot on the Team USA gravel squad just a few weeks before when he took second at the 2024 Elite Men's Gravel National Championship in his home state of Nebraska. For him, his qualification for worlds was an opportunity he couldn't let pass.
"I was never really expecting to race the World Championship Gravel Race at the beginning of the year, but as the year went on it became a bigger part of my thinking ... especially seeing that some of the top Americans weren't going to be racing, I almost felt like I had a duty to do it," he said.
In the end, Lauren would end up the top-placed American woman in 14th place and John would be forced out of the race after a series of unlucky punctures.
We couldn't be prouder of our Ventum contingent and of Team USA as a whole. As John found out, it seems like the Flemish crowds lining the course felt the same way.
"The support from the fans was overwhelming; they cheered “USA! USA! USA!” with infectious enthusiasm, even if many weren’t American.," John said.