TRUE GRIT - 10 TOUGH LESSONS FOR A ROAD GROWN BRIT RACING US GRAVEL

After surrendering his road racing dream, Brit Joe Laverick finds redemption, hope and glory on the US gravel scene

- Brit Joe Laverick

As the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ hammers out from the loudspeakers, I can’t help but feel like a big kid on a grand adventure. Around me, all the Americans have their hearts. Ahead of us lies more hours of gravel racing than we even dare to guess at. As the national anthem dies down, whoops and cheers of “America” punctuate the hush. Racing on the US gravel scene hadn’t been in my career plan – standing on the start line, it feels just right.

I’d stepped away from full-time road racing at the end of the 2022 season. My WorldTour dream hadn’t worked out, in the familiar way: a spell of racing for development teams, a series of injuries, and finally the acceptance that I was not quite good enough to make it. But I knew I had to keep racing. Across the Atlantic glowed the embers that could reignite my riding career – I didn’t need a team, I just needed a gravel bike and a plane ticket.

I knew that if I could win a big gravel race over in the States, I’d justify my continuing to pursue a pro career. Road isn’t everything, after all, and if you can perform on a long, dusty day in Kansas, you’re the real deal. It became my new dream: to prove I could be a pro bike racer outside of the usual mould.

I wasn’t alone in crossing the pond with a big American dream. While battling the peanut butter mud of last year’s Unbound Gravel in Kansas, I bumped into Danni Shrosbree – Britain’s first ever national gravel champion. Like me, Danni was attempting to reinvent herself, having raced on the road with DAS-Handsling and CAMS-Basso. We formed an unspoken alliance in that Kansas mud, willing each other through the race’s many dark moments. Since then, we’ve ridden many of the same races, and have caught up in random places across the USA. Below are 10 things that Danni and I have learned from our time on the US gravel scene.