Gavin Sherry (Cycle Sport) and Flavia Oliveira (Excel Sports) claimed victory at King Ridge, after they got the best of the defending champions, Brennan Wertz (Scott-Skipstone) and Jen Tavé (SpeedBlock- Terun) on the race-determining timed sections of the third event of the 2026 Grasshopper Adventure Series.
Through the timed sections Oliveira carved out a 13-second gap to last year's pro women's winner Tavé, while Larissa Connors was third at six minutes and 16 seconds back.
In the pro men's division, Sherry, who comes from a running background and called his day 'KOM hunting', had a 1-minute-and-22-second buffer to 2025 winner Wertz while Jovanni Stefani was third at just over three minutes back.
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"I spent the week leading into the event doing a training camp up north, riding many hours on some of my favorite roads. The week was capped off with some seriously hard efforts on some of the steepest roads imaginable, maybe not my strongest terrain, but a format I enjoy immensely," Wertz posted to Instagram after the event.
"It was a real joy to ride the neutral sections between segments with friends, take in the beauty of NorCal in its full spring glory, and push extremely hard on the timed segments."
The third Hopper in the series of five races has been around for two decades, providing scenic roads into Sonoma County’s coastal mountains and a change from the tactical battles that have ended in sprint finishes. At Huffmaster, Wertz won a three-rider sprint, while Oliveira and Tavé finished two-three from a four-rider breakaway.
The three timed sections which decided the results comprised 23 miles (37km) of the 91-mile course and almost 4,800 feet (1,463m) of the 9,116 feet of climbing across the route. The first 10.8-mile long timed segment came 17.5 miles into the event, the second 4.9 mile section was at 43 miles into the race while the final seven-mile section started at mile 60.
Last year the largely paved event in Monte Rio, California was the series decider with Tavé and Taj Krieger claiming the series wins, though this year King Ridge marks the mid-way point of competition.
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The pro women's standings with two races to go had Tavé holding the series lead over Connors in second and Oliveira in third. The pro men's standings were very tight, with Jack Duncan, who was seventh at King Ridge, edging ahead of Caden Kroettinger and Jacob Velasco, with Wertz moving into the top five.
The next event in the Grasshopper Adventure Series is the largely-gravel Jackson Forest race on April 25, which includes a large swathe of single track. Ukiah Mendo Gravel Epic on May 24 closes out the series with a dirt and climb heavy 76 miles.
22-year-old Gavin Sherry had the best times across all three climbing segments to win 2026 King Ridge (Image credit: Brian Tucker Photography)
Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.
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