The first round of competition for the 2024 Unbound Gravel race begins today far away from the mud and mayhem of the Flint Hills of Kansas with the lottery opening for entries into four of the five race categories, including the signature Unbound 200.
From January 5 (12:00 CET) to January 20 (23:59 CET) individuals can submit their names into a lottery to participate in the category distances of 200, 100, 50 or 25 miles.
Five days after the lottery closes, the announcement of participants from a random selection process will be made on January 25 by Life Time, which owns and operates the high-demand gravel endurance event. This year’s Garmin Unbound Gravel presented by Craft Sportswear takes place May 31-June 1 in Emporia, Kansas.
For a third year, Unbound Gravel 200 serves as the second stop in the Life Time Grand Prix off-road race series, which has increased the year-end prize purse to $300,000 for the invitation-only field of 30 women and 30 men. Series athletes do not have to go through the lottery process, but many of the 4,000 riders selected for bib numbers earn the opportunity to match themselves on, all or some, of the same roads at the best gravel pros.
USA’s Keegan Swenson won the men’s Unbound 200 competition this past June from a seven-rider sprint finish in Emporia, and went on to secure a second Grand Prix title. German Carolin Schiff took a solo victory in the women’s elite field, with defending champion Sofia Gomez Villafañe taking second place. Villafañe would take top Grand Prix points, however, and go on to win the series title for women.
Unbound Gravel, now in its 18th year as an organised event, has become the preeminent gravel race on a growing global calendar, with the 200-mile competition across the hilly terrain of tire-shredding flint rocks the centrepiece of the multiple ride options.
The routes for all distances have not been disclosed yet in detail, but the direction will be flipped from last year and heads back to a northerly circuit. Like last year, the elite fields of the 200-mile contest will be staged for an early departure, the pro men starting at 5:50 a.m. local time and the pro women two minutes later. The main field for Unbound 200 takes the course eight minutes behind the pro women. The 100-mile riders have a mass start at 7:00 a.m., followed two hours later by a combined mass start for the two shorter distances.
While the enrollment process for event selection is free, the credit card information collected won’t be charged until individuals are accepted, the price range set from $55 for the 25-mile distance to $295 for Unbound 200. The junior event will be moved into the 50 and 100-mile distances for 2024. The XL event, 350 miles in length with a race start on May 31, concluded a separate lottery process in early December.
The drama of the 2022 Kansas event, with equipment controversies and unpredictable weather impacting competitors in the Life Time Grand Prix, was captured in a 31-minute video by event organisers, Call of a Life Time. Season 2 for the video series, expected to highlight torrential downpours, massive mud and chaos of the 200-mile event, will be released by Life Time on January 26 on YouTube.
