[Photography by ©The Traka | ©Roger Salanova]

Just a couple of weeks back, some 4,500 brave and bold bikers lined up to take on the Traka gravel races in Girona, Spain. Pedal back just a decade or so and the mere thought that riders in mass numbers and on dropped bars would be ratting their way off-road over mountains, while covering distances up of up to 560km in one go, and without any outside assistance – well, few would have believed such a thing would happen in cycling. And yet the limited number of Traka entries sold out faster than cut-priced new iPhones.

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Meanwhile, this coming weekend we'll see the staging of Britain’s biggest gravel race – the Gralloch, in Scotland. This is a UCI Gravel World Series race, yet another entity that didn’t exist just four years back. It’s also a qualifier for the Gravel World Championships – an official UCI-sanctioned race where amateur racers get to line up to race the same course, on the same day, as the biggest road pros in the sport – yet another amazing and rapid evolution of the sport of cycling.

And yet, unlike with other established branches of a sport, these races are all very different in structure, organisation, reasoning, and indeed governance, and seemingly they’re all thriving.

What’s it all about? Can such different events and organisations survive and prosper in a sport once traditionally ruled by the rusty iron fist of authority and regulation?

The Traka and the Gravel Earth Series

If you follow cycling in any of its forms, then you’ve no doubt heard of the Traka - it’s hard not to have done. The Traka has become a friendly monster on the emerging gravel racing scene, and it garners media, influencer, and bike industry attention on a huge scale, and duly so.

Initially launched back in 2019, on a very small scale, the Traka has rapidly grown to become Europe’s most prestigious and prized gravel race. With a 100km race, the blue riband 200km and 360km races, plus the new 560km Adventure distance, the Traka has something to challenge all gravel enthusiasts and the pros alike. Taking on superb trails around Catalunya and into the foothills of the Pyrenees, the Traka also attracts some of the biggest names from both past and present eras of pro cycling, as well as the brightest young gravel talent from all over the world, with 74 nations represented this year.

2025 traka (Liam Mercer)

We’re not going to try and define, or even seek out to see if “the spirit of gravel” even exists, though we dare say that many who have ridden events such as the Traka and Unbound have indeed found something along those lines, suffering in the dirt, perhaps more so for those who were in for the ride over those aiming for glory. Either way, races such as the Traka and Unbound have stood firm on their ideals and are what could, one day, come to be considered 'true' old-school gravel races (though gravel is so relatively new it’s hard to yet define its identity). These races are also somewhat set aside from the UCI-sanctioned Gravel World Series.

The Traka is laid down by Klassmark, which organises a number of gravel races, trail races, and other sport and nature-based events. Along with several other major gravel races, the company banded together to form the Gravel Earth Series, which is currently a mix of 24 races of varying formats, including the Migration Gravel stage race in Kenya and the single-day Rift in Iceland. 

All of these races are bonded by the same principles, with sustainability, nature, culture, and history all being part of their theology.

UCI Gravel World Series and World Championships

The official UCI Gravel World Series was first launched as a season-long global gravel race series back in 2022, the same year that the first UCI Gravel World Championships took place in Italy.

2025 Traka 4 (Liam Mercer)

Run much along the lines of the UCI Gran Fondo World Series (and by the same organisation – Golazo), the series has various age group categories and offers qualification options (first 25% of finishers in each category) for the UCI Gravel World Championships. Unlike with the Gran Fondo series, the Gravel World Championships carries official UCI Elite level recognition – and the coveted rainbow jersey that goes with that. 

Naturally, this means that the title race is attracting a growing number of the world’s best road pros and mountain bikers, as well as the gravel pros and regular racers. With this also comes a certain extra level of regulation and conformity in structure and distance, and many out there have likened recent title races to rough road races, which has some justification, though gravel does indeed come in many flavours. This year, the series comprises 33 individual rounds plus the World Championships.

This coming weekend sees Britain’s biggest gravel race, the Gralloch, take place in southwest Scotland, which is the first of the UK’s two World Series rounds. The other is the Graean Cymru in North Wales this September, which offers a last chance for Brits to qualify for the World Championships in October.

While the UCI series is quite different from the Gravel Earth and Lifetime GP series, it is also proving to be quite the hit, with over 3,000 riders expected at Gralloch this weekend.

Unbound and the Life Time Grand Prix

Unbound Gravel (formerly Dirty Kanza) is perhaps the biggest and most prestigious gravel race in the world, and similar to the Traka in approach. It also has multiple distance options. 

The US Midwest (including Kansas) is considered by many to be the spiritual heartland and birthplace of gravel racing as we know it, and Unbound personifies that in many ways. 

2025 Traka 2 (Liam Mercer)

We’ve covered Unbound and the Life Time Grand Prix previously here and in depth. Essentially, the LTGP is a series based on 50 selected elite racers who race a series of the US’s major off-road classic events for a considerable overall prize purse. All events are now owned by Life Time, which also owns various sports facilities and sporting events in North America. The GP is effectively a race within a regular series of races, and in recent years racers such as Keegan Swenson have focussed their whole season, even careers, on this series, such is its short but huge magnitude.

Anti-doping

There’s no getting away from the fact that cycling has a long and dirty history when it comes to doping, performance-enhancing substances, and other procedures. Although time has moved on, it does still exist in many areas of all sports, and at all levels of the sport.

The Traka recently made quite a point in stating its belief on anti-doping, and rightly so, especially given the vast number of former top road pros racing the event, and its ever-increasing stature. As we understand, the testing was confined to the main 200km and 360km events and was based on elite podium finishers, which are just a fraction of the 4,500 rider field, plus, we assume a couple of elite random tests were taken (though that is unconfirmed).

2025 Traka 3 (Liam Mercer)

However, don’t get to thinking that it’s only the Traka that has introduced anti-doping protocols, as many of the major gravel races out there have had them for some time. Unbound introduced testing in 2022, and it’s now part of the LTGP series protocol.
The UCI Gravel World Series? We asked series organiser Erwin Vervecken on this one

“Doping control is not a decision of the organiser of an event, but always a decision of the anti-doping entity of every country/region.”

He continued, “We did have doping control testing in several events in the past years, but we never made a fuss about it.  Also, at the World Championships, there is always mandatory doping control.”

Needless to say, this is all good and necessary for the sport and its image.

Co-existence and harmony?

When the UCI first stepped into the gravel arena back in 2022, many within the gravel scene at the time feared for its future – which carried a fair amount of justification, especially give just how huge impacts of the “official sanctioning” by the UCI had on mountain biking back in the early 1990s. This is something that some see as for the better, while others see it as a culling of the freedom and 'spirit' of the fledgling sport – déjà vu, perhaps?

Either way, change and evolution are inevitable in any competitive sport, and the higher the profile becomes, the higher the stakes and rewards, as we’ve seen with the 'marginal' gains approach of elite riders at races such as Unbound.

Thankfully, and against certain odds drawn based on historical precedence, gravel is thriving in all of its forms thus far. Even if the various series, organisations, and events may be somewhat at opposite ends of the scales when it comes to beliefs, approaches, and ideals, they are seemingly all able to do well and while retaining their independence. 

Having this diversity within the sport seems to be what it thrives on, and long may it continue to grow in every possible direction.

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