Australia will be stepping into the UCI Gravel World Championships in Belgium with a women’s squad that boasts a strong mix of proven gravel talent and road crossover riders, including debuting Australian champion Courtney Sherwell, Giro d’Italia stage winner Neve Bradbury and proven player Tiffany Cromwell.
The men’s team will include the experience of Nathan Haas, last year’s Australian gravel champion Connor Sens, Freddy Ovett and Oliver Stenning among a squad of nine that will take on the 181km men’s race from Halle to Leuven on Sunday October 6. Completing the squad is Laurens Black, Tom Chester, Kobe Henderson, Matthew Shepherd and Ben Spenceley. Brendan Johnston, who was automatically selected as national champion, opted not to compete.
Selections for the elite men’s team were dominated by those who gathered qualification through the UCI Gravel World Series but for the women’s elite team it was a combination of series qualification and wild card entries from the national federation, AusCycling. It is a combination that should deliver a powerful squad for the 134km event on Saturday October 5.
Sherwell is the most off-road focussed of the squad with the rider who last weekend represented her nation at the Marathon Mountain Bike World Championships also having swept up a number of key gravel victories at home as well as clutching two runner-up spots in the Belgian Waffle Ride series in the US at the start of this year.
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