The Unbound 200 may be done for the year, but its riders are still reeling from the tough conditions faced on Saturday’s race.
A combination of rain-exposed rock gardens, torrential pre-race downpours and mud-slick trails took victims throughout the weekend, including 2024’s Unbound 200 winner, Lachlan Morton. The EF Education-EasyPost rider took a hard slam just a quarter of the way into the race, falling heavily on his left hip. Though he managed to pedal to the first aid station, medics diagnosed him with concussion, and he exited the race.
“I had a big slam in one of the rocky sections,” Morton said in a post on his team’s Instagram page. “It was of my own doing. Landed on my hip quite hard which is pretty sore right now. The organisers did a great job, they checked me out for concussion once I got back to the aid station. Otherwise, I’m ok, just a little disappointed. The race was going well but [there were] brutal conditions out there.”
Morton wasn’t the only rider to abandon early on. Of the 117 riders that started the Unbound 200 elite men’s race, 37 dropped out before its end. In the women’s, 15 of the 62 starters also abandoned. The drop-out rate was even more staggering in the Unbound XL: only 60 riders finished the 350 mile race, of an initial 237 starters.
Huge names joined Morton in an early race exit. In an Instagram post after the race, Romain Bardet praised his fellow riders’ ability to manage the mental load of endurance racing as well as the technical skills needed to manage equipment over nine hours: “It was a day for the brave,” he wrote.
Another rider whose dreams of winning Unbound came to an early end was Nicole Frain. After making it into the lead group, the Oceania Champion crashed hard in a mud ridge. After attempting to readjust her handlebars, Frain continued, though riding with crooked handlebars caused back pain enough for her to abandon.
In a post-race Instagram post, she captured the dualism – and brutality – of gravel racing, writing: “Ahhh this race. It was going so good until it wasn’t.”
On the other side of a disappointing Unbound, Lachlan Morton echoed Frain’s sentiments. “Drove to Kansas , saw some friends, played in the mud […] got rained out at the rodeo, now I’m driving home,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “That’s the game and I’ll keep playing it.”
Mads Würtz Schmidt was the ultimate winner of the men’s 200, with Sofia Gomez Villafañe winning the women’s. In the Unbound XL, Robin Gemperle and Svenja Betz finished first in their categories.
