Cascade mountains, camping and crazy hard racing - Sofia Gomez Villafañe and Cameron Jones win GC titles at Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder

Sofia Gomez Villafañe (Specialized Off-road) swept all five stages to earn the elite women's overall title at the Oregon Trail Gravel presented by Schwalbe stage race, while reigning Unbound Gravel 200 champion Cameron Jones (Scott Sports USA) used two stage wins and three more podiums to claim the GC for elite men.

The event is part of the Gravel Earth Series, with a plus-20% score on top of the 1,000 base points as one of the five top-ranked events in the global series.

Five days of racing from June 25-29 was held on mainly dirt roads and rocky paths through rugged terrain of the Cascade Mountains, featuring lava fields, deep forests and mountain lakes that added up to 360 miles (580km) and 29,500 feet (9,000 metres) of elevation gain.

Villafañe, who won the overall women's title in her last appearance in 2022 by more than 14 minutes, had a tougher outing this time as she was pressed across the five days by two other former winners, defending champion Cécile Lejeune (CCB p/b Levine Law Group) and 2021 champion Sarah Sturm (Specialized-SRAM-Rapha). Villafañe's total time was 20 hours, 9 minutes, 14 seconds, just 2:35 ahead of Lejeune, and 13 minutes better than Sturm.

"It’s a really, really hard stage race. Having separate starts and no drafting rules—not trying to just peg it to stay with the men—was a little bit easier racing for me. It was a really good five days. I’m potentially eyeing a Gravel Earth Series run," said Villafañe in a recap distributed by organisers.

The US-based rider with dual Argentina and US citizenship won her inaugural appearance at The Traka 200 in May, a mid-level plus-10% scoring event in the Gravel Earth Series.

Lejeune returned to Oregon to defend her title from last year, and took Villafañe to the line in sprint finishes on stages 2 and 5.

“I knew the racing was going to be harder than the previous year. Every single woman pro was active and made the race hard at one point or another….I still haven’t mastered [the sprints]. I have to do some work on those," she said.

Jones opened his account with a sprint victory over Skyler Taylor (Above Category-Sarto-Q36.5) and then won stage 2 by more than a minute. Payson McElveen (Allied Cycle Works) returned to racing after suffering a fractured hip at Sea Otter Classic Gravel in April and scored a pair of podiums on the first two days of racing.

Stage 3 had three timed enduro segments - an uphill, a rollercoaster and a flowy downhill - where Taylor his first of two stages. The California rider won this year's Highlands Gravel Classic, a UCI Gravel World Series event, and with a 39th place at Unbound Gravel, earned a wildcard entry into the Life Time Grand Prix by winning a tie-break.

Griffin Easter (OpiCure Gravel p/b Orbea-Castelli SOG) won the stage 4, the queen stage with four major ascents.

Even though Taylor won the sprint against Jones and McElveen for the final stage victory, he finished second overall, coming up 2:18 short of the Jones' winning time of 17 hours, 21 minutes, 59 seconds.

“I was climbing a bit better this year and was able to stay at the pointy end of the race,” Jones said, as he was fourth overall last year in Oregon.

“I was really happy with my first two stages, managing to take some time, and then the last two stages were really about pacing myself through the mountains and keeping the overall lead.”

Unbound Gravel XL champion Rob Britton (Factor-OVRLND p/b Castelli SOG) secured third overall, 10:16 off the pace, with consistent results on the varied terrain. McElveen was fourth overall and Easter fifth.

Italian Mattia de Marchi (Enough Cycling Collective) completed only three of the five stages, suffering from a crash that he said on social included "a few marks in the body, a few bruised ribs, a bump on the head" and posted a "died of dysentery" on the results sheet, the organiser's version of a DNF.

Results