The lottery for the 2024 UNBOUND Gravel opens tomorrow and will stay open until January 20 with the lottery announcement on January 25.
Now in its 18th year, UNBOUND Gravel is the world’s premier gravel race, with the marquee race covering 200 miles of hilly terrain surrounding Emporia, Kansas and the 2024 edition will be once again heading north. UNBOUND also serves as the second race in the Life Time Grand Prix race series where 30 women and 30 men will be competing for the biggest prize purse to date, an equally split $300,000 reward.
The routes for all distances have not been disclosed yet in detail, but the direction will be flipped from last year and heads back to a northerly circuit. Like last year, the elite fields of the 200-mile contest will be staged for an early departure, the pro men starting at 5:50 a.m. local time and the pro women two minutes later. The main field for Unbound 200 takes the course eight minutes behind the pro women. The 100-mile riders have a mass start at 7:00 a.m., followed two hours later by a combined mass start for the two shorter distances.
While the enrollment process for event selection is free, the credit card information collected won’t be charged until individuals are accepted, the price range set from $55 for the 25-mile distance to $295 for Unbound 200. The junior event will be moved into the 50 and 100-mile distances for 2024. The XL event, 350 miles in length with a race start on May 31, concluded a separate lottery process in early December.
The drama of the 2022 Kansas event, with equipment controversies and unpredictable weather impacting competitors in the Life Time Grand Prix, was captured in a 31-minute video by event organizers, Call of a Life Time. Season 2 for the video series, expected to highlight torrential downpours, massive mud and chaos of the 200-mile event, will be released by Life Time on January 26 on YouTube
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