It was the tightest of finishes in the elite men's race at Wörthersee Gravel on Sunday, with Jordan Habets (Rose Racing Circle) just beating Gustav Frederik Dahl (Team Give Steel) to the top spot in Austria while Nicole Frain (Factor Racing) delivered a solo victory in the women's elite race to keep her winning roll at the year's Gravelking UCI Gravel World Series events running.
It was Frain's third victory in as many races when she crossed the line of the challenging alpine course with a 27-second advantage to runner up Mieke Kröger (Rose Racing Circle) and 42 seconds ahead of home-nation rider Jana Gigele, who rounded out the podium with third.
The Australian rider made the pivotal move in the second lap, quickly opening the gap and holding it to the end to add victory in Austria to the Oceania champion's late March wins in Belgium and Portugal.
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The 150km event started and finishing on the shores of Lake Wörthersee in Velden and took in two loops, with the second being a slightly altered version of the first. The course also accumulated 1,713m of elevation gain along the way, the climbing beginning early with a steep gravel climb to test the legs of the riders just a few kilometres from the start of the race and a testing ascent not far out from the finish line in Velden.
The women's elite podium at the Worthersee Gravel Race 2026, a Gravelking UCI Gravel World Series event (Image credit: Worthersee Gravel Race)
In the elite men's race a key move went early in the second lap, with ten riders breaking clear. Habets and Dahl then broke away, working together to keep the gap and then deciding the winner in the tightest of battles on the line. The decision came down to a photo finish that showed Habets ahead by just millimetres.
A chasing group of six then sprinted for the final spot on the podium two-and-a-half minutes later and it was third for Luis Neff (Rose Racing Circle) as he came across the line ahead of Fabian Rabensteiner (Torpado-Kenda-FSA).
The Wörthersee Gravel Race is the only Austrian event in the UCI Gravel World Series, which provides riders with the opportunity to qualify for the 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships. The race for the rainbow jerseys will this year be held on an ascent- and gravel-heavy course in Nannup, Western Australia on October 10-11.
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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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