Pointers to control drafting, particularly associated to the completely different classes of riders in elite girls’s races, are coming to the Life Time Grand Prix in 2025. In actual fact, occasion organisers will start implementation of recent guidelines subsequent week on the season’s opening occasion, Sea Otter Basic Gravel in California after which assess if modifications are wanted for the remaining 5 occasions.
“We’ll see a no drafting rule for ladies. In actual fact, we will announce within the subsequent couple of days,” mentioned Kimo Seymour,president of Life Time Occasions, which owns and operates the Grand Prix collection and the assortment of six mountain bike and gravel races.
Seymour spoke at a digital Life Time Grand Prix press convention on Wednesday and confirmed that drafting “has a huge effect” when elite girls encounter elite males or different divisions of riders, throughout a contest. He mentioned it has been a problem on the desk because the inaugural season concluded in 2022, and Life Time has taken time to handle the most important hurdle for a rule – implementation.
“The most important problem, clearly with any new guidelines that we implement, and my largest problem is find out how to implement it and the way do you implement it pretty. It is actually difficult on these distant programs the place it is laborious to get marshals, get individuals round to see. You simply cannot watch a complete race on these programs so it is actually difficult however we will take it on,” Seymour informed the gathering of media, which included Cyclingnews.
“We have gone spherical and spherical on this during the last couple years. We debated ready till Unbound [May 30-31] to roll it out, however we will go forward and roll one thing out right here for Sea Otter. We expect with the way in which the course units up, with the separate day, it will give us a possibility to work by way of a number of the kinks on enforcement.”
For the primary time in 4 seasons, the Grand Prix will swap from a mountain bike competitors to a gravel occasion for the opening spherical in Monterey and supply the elite divisions a devoted day of racing. The Sea Otter Basic Gravel races for elites will happen Thursday, April 10, with a 20-minute hole between the boys’s and ladies’s fields. All different divisions will compete on Friday, April 11.Â
In 2023 Life Time applied separate begins for elite girls and elite males in any respect six races, although the time buffers between fields fluctuate relying on the programs. There have been blended emotions about how drafting nonetheless impacts the dynamics of a real girls’s race, as riders from different classes can get absorbed with a lead pack, or most probably, the remainder of the sphere.Â
On the whole, drafting inside every class is permissible, however it’s the drafting amongst riders in numerous classes that’s being addressed. The important thing for Life Time was to make use of suggestions from elite girls, take a look at the programs and decide the implementation.
“There will be plenty of suggestions, plenty of criticism, plenty of enter. Final 12 months, we obtained plenty of enter from a lot of the feminine riders. We introduced them collectively and obtained plenty of ideas and plenty of steering. You additionally get plenty of opinions. Sorting by way of that’s most likely the most important problem.”
Unbound has modified guidelines during the last three years on different subjects as nicely, together with the elimination of mass begins and no allowing consolation bars in races. Most of the prime girls’s opponents applauded Life Time for offering a bigger hole between the elite fields at Unbound Gravel final 12 months, elevated to fifteen minutes, after which the novice fields got the inexperienced flag 25 minutes after the elite girls.Â
2023 Unbound Gravel champion Carolin Schiff famous final 12 months that whereas the ladies’s lead pack noticed no interactions with different fields, the identical was not true for riders behind the sphere and one thing greater than a brand new rule could also be wanted.
“I feel the one answer to keep away from the impression of the boys on the ladies’s race are races on completely different days. A much bigger time hole is sweet, however in the long run, the fields might be blended once more.”
Seymour referred to the ladies’s non-drafting subject as “tips” moderately than agency guidelines and mentioned particulars can be introduced within the coming days.
