Gravel Racing in South Africa continues to gain popularity and has now been boosted by the launch of the In the Sticks Gravel Series. The five-race series will offer decent prizemoney, media coverage and a high-standard of organisation. The full series will launch in 2025, but an abbreviated three-race version kicks off in July 2024.
Since it was given official International Cycling Union (UCI) discipline status in 2022, Gravel Racing is enjoying remarkable global growth. And South Africa is riding that wave. The launch of In the Sticks Gravel Series adds greater structure to the discipline, which has attracted a combination of hardcore road racers, seasoned mountain bike racers and endurance racing enthusiasts.
“Unfortunately, for various reasons, road racing has taken a knock in South Africa, particularly in the Gauteng province. But Gravel Racing is going some way to picking up that slack and in order to maintain that momentum, there needs to be guaranteed high quality events,” said Kyle Mitchell.
“We (myself and my close community) decided that we need to make a difference and ensure that we create a Gravel Race series that offers the Elite and Professional racers good incentives and rewards as well as delivering well-organised, safe, reliable events for the more recreational riders,” added Mitchell.
“We are passionate bicycle racers ourselves and we own and manage the Honeycomb Pro Cycling team. We want teams like ours and other privateer racers to have the right kind of events to inspire them. We decided on a series of five events so that there’s a podium battle at each event on a different route as well as overall prizes for consistency across the events,” added Mitchell.
Points will be allocated at each round of the 2025 Series right down to 30th position in the Elite Men and Women’s divisions. Each round of the In the Sticks Series will offer R100 000 in cash prize money. This will be split equally between men and women with the overall winners earning R25 000 each. Cycling South Africa age categories for Sub-Veteran, Veteran, Master and Grand Master men and women will also be accommodated and rewarded.
“Having a 160km high-profile race each month through Autumn and Winter in Gauteng is a great way to keep riders motivated. We are aiming for at least 500 entrants per race in the 2024 events and plan to ramp that up in 2025 when the series will be fully established,” said Mitchell.
Each event will offer a comfortable, safe environment for supporters at the start/finish venue.
The 2024 events will be as follows:
Saturday 27 July: Event 1
Honeycomb BEE Ratings Gravel Travel 100 Miler
Café du Cirque, Walkerville
160km | 950m ascent
60km | 350m ascent
Saturday 24 August: Event 2
Venue to be announced.
Saturday 28 September: Event 3
Venue to be announced.
To keep updated as the series develops, follow In the Sticks Gravel Series social media accounts:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inthesticks_gravelseries/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559115815001
For more information send an email to Kyle on kyle@honeycomb-bee.co.za or call 083 3870581.
