Newly retired four-time Tour de France stage winner Luis León Sánchez is the latest WorldTour rider to find a new home – and indeed find success – on the gravelly stuff. Sánchez, riding for the Murcia Cycling Federation, as opposed to the Astana Qazaqstan colours he could be found in last season, was victorious in the 114 Gravel Race in Badajoz, south-west Spain on Saturday (March 23).
He outsprinted pro mountain biker Pablo Rodgríguez Guede at the end of the 130km race. The women's winner was Lucía González (Bizkaia Durango).
The Spaniard Sánchez, who also won Paris-Nice, two editions of Klasika San Sebastian and the Vuelta a España mountains classification during a 21-year career at the top level, is not the first former pro to turn to the rough stuff. Not even the first this month, in fact.
Classics star Greg Van Avermaet, who also retired last year, announced this month that he had signed up to a professional gravel racing 'micro' team – Team Last Dance – with whom he will ride Unbound this year among others.
The Belgian, who is a former Olympic road race champion and Paris-Roubaix winner, had originally gained a place at Unbound – one of gravel racing's foremost appointments – via the public ballot, but will now get to race it as part of the pro outfit. Van Avermaet now has a busy calendar of major events ahead of him in 2024, including Traka in Spain, the Gralloch in Scotland, and the UCI Gravel World Championships.
Van Avermaet will ride alongside another erstwhile pro peloton colleague, Petr Vakoč, a former Czech road champion and winner of Branbantse Pijl in 2016, and Dutch rider Douwe Doorduin.
“I am someone who likes to be active," Van Avermaet told Doorduin during the team's launch video. "Even as a professional cyclist, I would occasionally watch another race and say ‘I would like to participate in that, that mountain bike race, that triathlon'."
“But not much is possible on the road because the calendar is packed, so that’s why I wanted to do this. A bit of a challenge, not setting that high goals but still having fun. And I think this could be a lot of fun.”
Other high-profile professional riders to turn their hand to gravel include reigning world champions Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), and Ineos Grenadiers rider Connor Swift, who won the UCI-ranked Gralloch in Scotland last year.
These riders are currently fitting gravel in around their road-going day jobs, rather than having become fully immersed. Once they retire like Van Avermaet and Sánchez who knows – they may become part of what seems to be an ever-burgeoning phalanx of former professionals fitting knobblies and choosing to rough it.
