Nicole Frain wins seventh race of season at Heathland Gravel, while fellow Australian sets FKT on Icelandic Divide - Gravel Bits

Nicole Frain (Factor Racing-RCC) and Daan Soete (Ridley Racing) won on debut at Heathland Gravel on Sunday. It was the third edition of the Belgian gravel race, which serves as the only European qualifier for Unbound Gravel.

The 160km of dusty trails twisted from Maasmechelen on the west side through Flanders and featured 10 timed sections. Both Frain and Soete used similar tactics to begin with fast times and then settle in for the final segments.

Frain won with an accumulated time of 3:40:33, 11:50 faster than Hanne Van Loock in second and 14:10 better than Nathalie Bex, both of Belgium.

Soete won with a combined time of 3:24:57. Kevin Panhuyzen (Storms Cycling Team-Ridley) finished second by just 26 seconds. Adne Koster (Seka-Reynolds), who has twice finished runner-up, took third 48 seconds off the best time.

The first tick of the clock came after the opening climb in the first 5km, the first segment technical with sandy tracks. Next came across segments 2-4, going back-to-back-to-back for 57.6km, and then a long stretch of sand arrived at section 5 with a climb at the end and marking the half-way point of the race. Sections 7 and 8 also included most of the back-half climbing for a relatively flat final pair of timed sections.

Frain never faltered, setting the top times in all 10 segments. The Oceania Gravel Champion earned her seventh race win of the season, which began with RADL GRVL in January that also gave her the Continental title, and has included four wins in the UCI Gravel World Series in Europe.

"I went full gas from the start and just see where it sort of ended up. Those first couple of sectors were quite technical, so I thought there's a good opportunity," Frain told organisers.

"I'm pretty buggered, yeah tired. It's a challenging parcours. For me, the conditions were good. I'm more used to heat and I prefer the heat."

Conditions were mild and dry for all starts, but the thermometer moved to 30°C for the final hours. Soete said the early moves were fruitful so that when the heat arrived it was manageable.

"It was a hard day. I think the course is quite technical, a lot of corners. It was good we started in the morning, the weather was hot, the last two hours it was getting very warm," he told organisers at the finish for his first gravel win of the year.

Soete and Panhuyzen grabbed the best times on the first section, then Koster went to work on the middle sections. Soete began to close a gap from seventh place to third place and made up a final deficit on the final 9.5km section.

"If you have advantage in the beginning [in the sand], you know the situation for sure. And if you keep up with the others then for the rest of the race, you know you are going to be close on the podium. So that was one of my plans," the accomplished cyclo-cross racer said.

"It's a special concept with the timed segments. It's the first time for me, so a little bit technical in the beginning. Then halfway through the race, we had a little bit advantage, Kevin Panhuyzen and myself. It's always unclear how much seconds you have, so you need to keep riding and keeping in the front."

Freddy Ovett sets FKT on Icelandic Divide

Australian Freddy Ovett took on the remote territory of Iceland to set a new Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the 376.7-kilometre trek across the Nordic island country. He completed Icelandic Divide in 16 hours, 30 minutes, 39 seconds, averaging 24.1 kph with 4,066 metres of elevation accumulated.

The record, from north to south, was established by Payson McElveen (Allied Cycle Works-Red Bull) in 2021, becoming the first athlete to complete the ride in under 24 hours, and he did it in 19 hours, 45 minutes. Ovett broke that mark by over three hours, and instead of riding in daylight hours he began at 6 p.m. local time in Akureyri to ride in 'unending dusk' into Vik.

"Doing something more than just racing each season is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now but doing exactly what and how isn’t easy to come up with. Speaking with COROS at the end of last season I mentioned this to them and within months they come up with the idea to attack the Iceland Crossing record. It was a perfect distance and route in terms of management for my first FKT experience and I readily accepted the challenge," he said in a press statement.

"It means quite a bit to me because as much as I love racing, I love even more the idea of challenging myself on my own terms in my own way and this ride is exactly that. I loved every part of the experience not just the ride itself but the entire team involved and the time we all had together in Iceland."

Ovett encountered more than a dozen water crossings, with tricky descents that followed for his very first FKT attempt. He plans to share the effort with a video.

He raced for seven seasons on the road, last with L39ION of Los Angeles in 2021-2022 and then transitioned to gravel in 2023. He has had several top 10s since, including Crushar in the Tushar and The Gralloch, and this year going 13th at RADL GRVL and 12th at Wich One Millau Grands Causses.

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