Sofia Gomez Villafane Wins Unbound Gravel 200 in a Five-Up Sprint

EMPORIA, Kansas (Velo) — Sofia Gomez Villafane won the 20th edition of Unbound Gravel on Saturday from a five-up sprint.

Gomez Villafane launched her sprint from an elite group that had formed a 30-minute gap to the next rider, catching the rest seemingly by surprise as she held on for her second career victory here at Unbound. She becomes the first repeat Unbound winner since Ted King in 2018.

Her Specialized Racing teammate Geerike Schreurs finished second. Cecily Decker snagged third place to round out the podium.

Gomez Villafane, Schreurs, Decker, Paige Onweller, and Rosa Kloser spent much of the race together, in a big contrast to the massive multiple-minute time gaps between each rider that marked the men’s top five.

As the race closed in on the finish in Emporia, the Specialized riders, Schreurs and Gomez Villafane, began to use team tactics to shake up the race. Schreurs took a flyer, chased down by Rosa Kloser, and soon it all came back together. The race would stay together until the finish chute, where Gomez Villafane had the strongest sprinting legs left after over 200 miles on a muddy course.

It capped off a mega-successful day for Specialized Racing, with the men going 1-2-5 as well in the 200.

That was a day of perseverance. I would say that Geerike had the cleanest race of the five of us, with Cecily hitting ground, Rosa flatting, and Paige dropping off and getting back on continuously.

“You could be the fittest athlete, but it might not mean a result for you. I think I had the smallest FTP out of us [in the lead group], so getting away solo wasn’t going to be an option. The plan was for Gee [Schreurs] to try to go solo, but when it came to the sprint, we were going all in on me, so to get a one-two is unreal.”

How it happened

The race rolled out of Emporia at 6:00 AM under moody skies and heavy speculation of what weather would do to the race. Like the mens, when the race hit the second minimum maintenance road (MMR) the mud generated from the rain the previous night detonated the peloton.

Within the first hour the race was reduced to 20 in the first hour. In context, that is just 10% through the race, and the peloton that would fight for the win was reduced to a fraction of the start list. And, to make matters even more exciting, the rain started to hammer down, adding a greasy layer of mud to the terrain. Throughout the next eight hours, the rain would periodically douse the race, coating the riders in a fresh mud mask.

The main driving force was the Specialized duo of Villafane and Schreurs, clearly looking for every opportunity to reduce the group and try to force mistakes from their rivals. Through their aggression, the group was down to 11 at mile 68. The lead group at this point was  Villafañe, Schreurs, Paige Onweller, Rosa Klöser, Cecily Decker, Hayley Preen,  Carolin Schiff, Sarah Lange, Nele Laing, Cecile Lejeune, Samara Sheppard, and Mieke Kröger.

“We had our friend, Jonathan, go out to the 1st MMR and he was like, ‘It’s dry, hero dirt,'” Villafane said of the conditions changing throughout the day. “We’re like, yeah, let’s go. And then the stuff that you thought was gonna be good just turned into craziness, you know, there were a lot of crushes, a lot of mechanicals. ”

The big split came through the key section after Texaco Hill, pulling the two Specialized women, Cecily Decker, and Rosa Kloser away from the rest. Initially, Paige Onweller missed the move, but she hit out on her own, looking to close the gap. Eventually, extraordinarily, she did around the halfway point at mile 100. That made it five out front – Villafane, Schreurs, Decker, Kloser, and Onweller — and those five would take it all the way to the line for the sprint.

A big move from  Lauren De Crescenzo did come, with the former Unbound winner having to claw all the way back from mud problems that set her back an hour into the race. While she never made it all the way back to the front, it was a tenacious ride from De Crescenzo to ride through the field in the way she did and take sixth on the day behind the leading group of five.

In the sprint, Specialized put their cards on Villafane, positioning Schreurs to mark moves and keep an eye on things while Villafane played it cool over the final undulations of the course. Out of the final corner, it was all Villafane as she quickly got a gap and grew it to over one-second by the end, giving her plenty of room to celebrate the second Unbound 200 win of her career.

Results: Unbound Gravel Women’s 200