A winner of four Grand Tour stages, Michael Woods retired last summer after 15 years of road racing. After completing his fifth Tour de France, he decided new challenges would put him outside his comfort zone and onto a beautiful new path. This weekend begins that track at the two-day Santa Vall in Spain as a gravel privateer convert.
The Gravel Earth Series opener near his home in Andorra will be his first off-road race with new partner Ventum bikes, then on to Sea Otter Classic Gravel and Unbound Gravel 200 in the US and a UCI Gravel World Series stop in Québec at OG Classique, as well as a qualification event for Ironman World Championships.
"I want to take on a bunch of different endurance challenges. And the gravel piece is more going to be oriented around the question - how's a WorldTour pro stack up in the world of privateers on gravel? Physiologically, they're quite similar," Woods told Cyclingnews about seeking satisfaction from new physical tests.
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"Actually, being a privateer, as I'm learning now, is a big undertaking, not just from a training perspective, but managing sponsors, managing your equipment, managing your social media. You realize how much of a team you have behind you when you're in the WorldTour. I'm based in Andorra, so my flight budget is quite big."
Just two years ago, he won a Canadian road race title and a third stage in his career at the Vuelta a España. Last year was his fifth season with Israel-Premier Tech, where he displayed a few more breakaway attempts at the Tour, but not bringing a repeat of the Puy de Dome glory in 2023 at the Tour. He thought about returning to race another year on the road, admitting he had a contract offer.
"I flew back to Canada a week later [after the Tour] with my family, in some of the best form of my life. The post-Tour bump is real, and I cruised around the gravel roads north of Ottawa at speeds I had never sustained before. Nothing seemed to faze me. I averaged 37 kph for over six hours on a gravel bike on my way back from a camping trip in Mont Tremblant," he wrote on his website blog just a week ago.
He said he envisioned finishing his career at Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, where his career took off in 2014, in front of his family and friends. However, season-long pain from an 'inguinal hernia' worsened after the Tour, so he had surgery instead of a home race farewell, "and my career as a pro cyclist ended with a whimper".
"I was confident that my retirement would only bring me great satisfaction. Instead, it brought the opposite," he wrote.
"I’m a firm believer that one of the most beautiful things you can do in life is challenge yourself. It is to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Fifteen years ago, I did that in cycling, and the years that followed proved to be some of the most exciting and fulfilling years of my life. Now, at 39, I feel as though, physically, I have a few more years left in the tank."
Woods is an accomplished endurance athlete across all seasons, from his early days in distance running and now to trail racing and skimo (ski mountaineering). A career milestone which may not be toppled soon is his achievement as the only person to have broken four minutes for the mile and won a stage at the Tour de France. He has a lot left in the tank with ambitions, and he hopes his body can keep up.
He started the calendar year with foot injuries, so he said that healing process will determine when he can compete in an Ironman this summer for qualification to the world championships in Hawaii.
"There's a lot of bumps and bruises in training for this calendar, because of skimo, running even the swimming. It's introducing new movements. At the same time, I'm doing so many different things, there's a lot of cross-training options," he admitted.
Skimo is a new medal sport at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, going on now in northern Italy. With three appearances in road cycling for Canada, including fifth place in the road race at the Tokyo Games, Woods said "a lot would have to happen" to make it to the 2030 Games.
"I love skimo, it's my passion. I think I like it more than cycling, more than running," he told Cyclingnews. "It's a very elemental sport, literally getting up and down the mountain as fast as you can, in the winter.
"But the Olympic version of it is more like a TikTok version of the actual discipline; it's like a sprint, two or three minutes in duration. It'll be quite fun to watch, but it's not like they're testing themselves against the elements or going over a big mountain pass. I'm hoping that by 2030 they do introduce a long course to the Olympics. If that's the case, then definitely I would be interested."
He won't have a solid gravel calendar due to the variety of endurance races in which he wants to try, calling it "a real bucket list year". NSN Cycling Team will still offer Woods support at select events, and he has DT Swiss wheels, Rule 28 clothing, The Feed, Silca, Ride Wrap and M2M as industry sponsors on his solo enterprise for off-road, as well as AI businesses How.com and Company.AI.
So what are his expectations at Santa Vall in just a few days?
"I have no idea. I haven't been on the bike as much as I'd like to, going into this. I have way too much time on the skis, because I am doing a skimo race the week following, and then gearing up for La Pierre Menta in March," he went on to explain that the latter was considered the Tour de France of ski mountaineering.
"But I think my cycling-specific form isn't where I'd ideally like to be, but I think I'll still have a good shot at doing well."
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