It's naive to think that trade team loyalties will disappear at the Gravel World Championships, I expect some of the season's strangest tactics yet

For the first time in its short history, the UCI Gravel World Championships are leaving Europe. And they’re not going somewhere obvious. They're heading to Nannup, a small town in Western Australia.

It’s set to be a very different World Championships from any we’ve seen to date. So far the races have had the air of an end-of-season road Classic. Nannup is something else, and there has been talk that it will create the first ‘real’ Gravel World Champions. It's the most gravel-heavy course we've seen. It's the hilliest to date. And perhaps most significantly for the result, it has the lowest density of WorldTour riders on the start list.

'How does one define a gravel race?' is a simple question that people like to answer with very complex answers. The UCI's own regulations set a low bar: ‘gravel races shall take place on any type of unsurfaced roads and can include gravel, forest roads, farm roads and tracks and cobbles. Tarmac surfaced roads should not total more than 40% of the race distance and cobbles are not considered as tarmac surfaced roads.’

In other words, a course can be almost half-road and still qualify. Nannup sits at the other end of the scale. Modelled off the UCI World Series ‘Seven Gravel Race’, it boasts more than 80% gravel, and the race director Stephen Gallagher is calling it “a very Liège-Bastogne-Liège type of elevation and demand”. The men’s race is 144km long with 3,713m of climbing; the women’s race sits at 125.6km and 3179m of climbing. The course rewards bike handling, equipment choice and a big engine. In other words, it’s what many describe as a ‘proper’ gravel race.

The long, expensive trip and a clash with the LifeTime Grand Prix has thinned the field so much that the provisional women’s start list has just 54 riders. But the most interesting question of the week isn’t necessarily who will turn up; it’s who people will be riding for.

Where do riders' loyalties lie?

One of the quirks of the UCI Gravel World Championships is qualification, and the knock-on effect it has on the race itself.

The UCI took the approach of a triathlon or Grand Fondo. Finish in the top 25% of your category at any of the events in the Gravel World Series, and you've qualified for Worlds. On top of that, each national federation can award wildcards for automatic entry: five men and five women, with the host nation getting the same again on top.

There’s no clear regulation on the maximum number of riders in the race either. By my count, not accounting for wildcards, if every qualified rider turned up, there would be 310 elite women and 570 elite men. With most of the field qualifying individually, national federations have very little say in selection, and in most cases they send no support at all. This creates an interesting dynamic.

On the road, the tension between trade and national loyalties is nothing new. One of the more famous cases came at the 2005 Road Worlds in Madrid, where Charly Wegelius and Tom Southam, racing for Great Britain, took payment from the Italian national team to ride on the front. The pair offered to repay the cost of their flights and hotel, and the British team manager resigned.

It surfaced again at last month's Worlds in Montreal, where Tom Pidcock, who finished seventh, accused Isaac del Toro of "obviously working for McNulty in the end", his UAE teammate who took the rainbow jersey. Even so, the road is a weak comparison. Those riders were selected, and in most cases, funded, by their national federations to be there. Gravel riders aren't.

So, what does that mean for the racing this weekend in Nannup? Expect to see a lot of things that don’t make sense. Last year’s elite women’s race proved just that.

The final kilometre saw three Dutch jerseys chasing down a lone Dutch leader after Lorena Wiebes’ trade teammate, Czech rider Julia Kopecky, helped to close the gap.

Wiebes admitted it in her post-race interview: "I was lucky that Julia Kopecký was still with me. At one point, she came up to me and asked: 'Can you win the sprint?' I said with conviction: 'Yes.' So I had to finish it off for her. Of course, I feel sorry for Shirin van Anrooij. But you don’t just give away a world title in the individual discipline that gravel is. I understand her disappointment.”

The individual discipline that gravel is.

The alliances to watch

Wiebes isn’t on the start list this year, but the question mark she exposed on the Dutch team will remain. This year’s Road Worlds showed the Dutch women at their best. That team has long been accused of not working together, but national team coach Laurens ten Dam built the squad around Vollering and won big.

In Nannup, the Dutch have Marianne Vos, the 2024 World Champion, and Lidl-Trek rider Riejanne Markus from the WorldTour. On top of that, there’s gravel specialists Larissa Hartog, Geerike Schreurs and Wendy Oosterwoud. It’s highly unlikely that we see the same cooperation from this team that we did from the Dutch in Montreal.

Then there’s the home nation. The Australians were one of the few teams to name the line-up via their National Federation, and a home Worlds could offer extra incentive to work together. If they were to work together, the Oceania Champion, Nicole Frain, would be the likely leader. Brendan ‘Trekky’ Johnston would have headed any men’s effort, but he’s staying in the States for his LTGP duties.

In the men's race, Florian Vermeersch, twice a runner-up before winning last year, is back to defend his title. Whether he links up with his compatriots, national champion Daan Soete, or fellow World Tour rider Stan Dewulf remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely. With riders paying their own way, there’s little reason to sacrifice their own chances.

Two riders who will line up with little team support are Britain's Connor Swift and German rider Rosa Klöser. Swift will be hoping to fly under the radar and improve on his 2023 podium, and Klöser will be dreaming of rainbows. The 2024 Unbound Gravel Champion is one of the most consistent gravel racers on the circuit, and doubling up her schedule with Canyon//SRAM has only made her stronger. At Sea Otter Girona last month, Klöser soloed away from Vos to win by multiple minutes.

But the biggest team in the race will most likely not be racing in the same jersey.

Enter Specialized

The stars of this year's gravel season, the riders of Specialized Off-Road Racing. Specialized are footing the bill for their travel, Specialised pay their salaries, and Specialized will probably send a support crew.

It would be naive to think that team loyalties disappear because the jerseys change for one day.

Sofía Gómez Villafañe and Mads Würtz Schmidt are both on for gravel's unofficial triple crown: Traka, Unbound and Worlds. Gómez Villafañe won the Traka 200, and Würtz Schmidt won the 360, before both took Unbound in May.

Villafañe’s route to the ‘Triple Crown’ is arguably more difficult. It’s more likely that her Dutch teammate, Geerike Schreurs, will align with her rather than the national team, but being a team of two on a climbing-heavy course complicates matters for them.

For the men, Mads Würtz Schmidt, Keegan Swenson and Matt Beers will all be in the mix.

Würtz Schmidt has looked unbeatable all season, winning more races than he’s lost, and Swenson is one of the gravel world's best climbers. On paper, the climbing course looks difficult for Beers, but time and time again he’s proven immune to gravity. The three of them may be racing under different jerseys this weekend, but together they will be formidable.

For Specialized the equation is simple: they have the chance to win the rainbow jersey with a rider that will wear it week in, week out. The opportunity to round out a near-perfect first season as a team; it’s unlikely they’ll let national jerseys impact that.

No matter the end winner in Nannup, we’ll see some of the strangest tactics of the season play out. Whether that’s riders with trade-team alliances racing for each other, or simply refusing to race against each other. Or, maybe I’m wrong, and it's a free-for-all. As Lorena Wiebes put it last year: “the individual discipline that gravel is.”