The race within a race: inside women’s professional gravel racing

This story is part of our series celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March, and exploring how the theme of ‘Inspire Inclusion’ can fit into women’s cycling, racing, tech and more.

The Belgian Waffle Ride Arizona began as most gravel races do: with full-speed chaos.

Men and women, young and old, all battled elbow-to-elbow trying to barge their way into a strong position before the first technical challenge on the course. It didn’t used to be this way, with gravel racing having a more laid-back atmosphere in its early stages, but that’s gone now. As the saying goes, rubbing is racing and this race is no different.

Among the pro men who amassed at the front of the peloton were a few smaller figures, dipping almost under the shoulders of some of the taller riders fighting for position. These are the women of gravel, fighting through the fray of the mass start to try and get as much of a jump on their competition as they can. And this was the first big race of the year, where the blinding early morning sun rose over the Sonoran desert, Arizona with points for the US three-race “BWR Triple Crown” series up for grabs.

Read more: Top-10 must do US gravel races in 2024

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The tightly packed start of the Belgian Waffle Ride Arizona peloton

Sofia Gomez Villafañe was the winner of the Life Time Grand Prix in 2023 and has been widely seen as the top gravel specialist of the last two years. She told us how she approaches the start of the race.

“It’s really different when we are just racing the women and not having the men involved,” Villafañe explained.

“My strength, which sometimes turns out to be a weakness, is I can go really hard at the beginning and I end up in a really fast group that might be above my punching level for a while. Today, I faded for a long time after that and I only came alive in the last hour of the race.”

Villafañe’s race, which was like a virtual game of chutes and ladders, is a common dynamic in women’s gravel racing. With the chaotic nature of the start paired with the long, grinding nature of the rest of these long events, energy and speed can come and go dramatically, swinging the race lead constantly from one rider to the next.

Alexis Skarda is one of the most prolific of these kinds of riders. Skarda, who came from mountain biking, is a super explosive rider. That power can lead to spectacular results, like her third place in Leadville MTB, and some bigger blow-ups. Nevertheless, Skarda is learning to find that balance between riding fast with the men at the start and taking a more controlled approach for the long game.

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Alexis Skarda on the final long climb of the course

“It's race as hard as you can and see how it shakes out," Skarda told us. "In a mass start you really never know for sure where everyone is. I would ask people but I could never get any answers. So I just stayed with the men's group I was with.”

Skarda was able to keep her pace high and even dropped the men she was with to take the lead of the women's race. Nevertheless, as the day wore on, her pace started to slow as the race spread out and groups of men to ride with grew sparse.

“I think I am still figuring out long-distance racing,” she explains. “When it comes to five hours plus races, it is a different style and I really like to just go hard. So I am trying to figure out how to use that and maybe spread it out a little more.”

Behind, the third rider of the eventual podium was having the opposite trajectory. Haley Smith, the 2022 Life Time Grand Prix champion, was getting her diesel engine rolling after a slow start.

Read more: 8 hidden gems of US gravel racing in 2024

The Canadian had focused on endurance in February and did not have the pop to match the faster groups of men that Skarda and Villafañe found. With that tendency, Smith is used to playing the long game and was rewarded for her efforts this time when she found herself in the fight on the final climb.

“The past couple of years I’ve been missing the pop to go at the beginning. So I’ve been missing that high-end power. But today I was much closer,” Smith said.

“Once you are at the end of the race, for sure you get to race each other. But for a while, you don't know. If someone tells you something in the race you don't trust it unless they're your personal coach. So, for instance today, I had no clue I was in it until I saw Alexis.”

On the final climb, with only a handful of miles to go, Smith caught Skarda and dropped her on the punchy gravel climb at the top of the long final test of the day. Knowing that Villafañe was behind, and knowing that she was struggling after the fast start, Smith got confident.

The confidence, however, was short-lived.

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Sofia Gomez Villafañe on one of the many loose descents of the BWR Arizona course

“All I needed was to see them,” Villafañe said. “I got a little discouraged on the road when I didn't, but at the top I thought I saw Skarda and I punched it into gear and made contact with her at the top.”

All of a sudden, after a day where the top three riders were spread far and wide along the course, the three were all within sight of each other with a long, technical downhill and a couple of punchy trail climbs left to race. There, at the top of the climb, the women of gravel finally knew where their race stood.

“When I caught Alexis near the crest of the final climb I thought ‘sick, maybe I'll win!'" Villafañe explained. "Six kilometres later, Sofia came up on me flying and I had nothing to respond with. I caught her with 50km to go and she was hurting units and so I was so surprised to see her again, she was so strong."

At the final climb, it was chutes and ladders once again as Villafañe went third to first, Alexis Skarda went first to third and Haley Smith went second, to first, to second.

“I could tell I was climbing stronger and it's a lot more fun doing the chase than being chased,” Villafañe said. “So as soon as I made contact with Haley I made sure to attack as soon as possible. I didn't know if she was saving it or if she knew how close I would be. When I passed her she said ‘I didn’t think I would see you again and I said, ‘Neither did I.’”

Villafañe went on to solidify her gap on the subsequent climb over Smith while Skarda was unable to make a chase after her aggressive riding earlier in the day. Once the results were tallied, Sofia Gomez Villafañe came out on top 1:25 seconds ahead of Haley Smith after five hours and fifty-four minutes of racing. Alexis Skarda came across the line a further six minutes back with a time of six hours flat.

After the podium ceremonies, all three of the top women gathered at a table, talking about the race that was. It was the first race of the year for all three of the riders so the stakes in terms of the riders overall seasons are fairly low.

However, in women’s gravel where the season is long and the moments of confrontation can be sparse, the opening race is still a tense affair and shows how important every high-profile US gravel race is. These women are far from elite amateur racers, they are professional riders and the racing environment is fierce.

While women’s gravel racing is beginning to implement more separated starts – a welcome addition to gravel according to all three of the women GCN talked to – gravel mass-participation events will only be able to separate the fields so much. The participatory demands of the racing require the events to run over one day. Eventually, because everyone is riding the same course at different speeds, the men's and women’s races will mesh together and the game of chutes and ladders will begin again. The challenges of this “race within a race” will exist to some extent no matter what.

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The first five finishers squeeze onto the podium of Big Waffle Ride Arizona

From the inside, this dynamic can make things hard to follow. Racers are often in the dark as to who they are exactly racing at any given moment. But from the outside, the mystery and big swings of women's racing is fascinating. It has arches and gaps in information like the road cycling of yesterday, with intrigue found in the unknown.