Keegan Swenson and Sofía Gómez Villafañe gained the 2026 editions of SBT GRVL introduced by Wahoo on Sunday in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Swenson claimed his fourth title on the 108-mile Black Course whereas Gómez Villafañe held off a decided Sarah Lange within the last kilometre.
SBT GRVL is likely one of the marquee occasions on the American gravel calendar, drawing hundreds of riders to the champagne gravel roads of Routt County. The 2026 version returned to downtown Steamboat Springs after final 12 months’s race was held on a modified circuit in close by Hayden. Every SBT GRVL course began and completed on Yampa Avenue, with the brand new 2026 Black Course that includes favorite sections of earlier routes plus with solely new segments. There have been additionally separate begins for elite males, elite girls, and novice classes in 2026, in addition to a rolling security enclosure.
How the race performed out
After starting the 2026 season with a devastating hip fracture, Keegan Swenson has made an excellent return to kind. After an early breakaway that includes Adam Roberge acquired away, Swenson pressured a range partway by means of the race. Following the steep gradients of Wahooligan Hill, Swenson bridged throughout to Roberge together with Cobe Freeburn and Henry Nelson.
Swenson wasn’t going to attend round for the dash, so with 20 miles to go, he went solo. With a wholesome hole to the sphere, Swenson nabbed his fourth SBT GRVL title forward of Alexey Vermeulen who got here impressively out of the chase group. Freeburn sprinted to 3rd on the rostrum, whereas Nelson completed fourth, one of the best results of his younger profession.
Swenson’s method at SBT GRVL is constant and dominant: make the race onerous early, cut back the group, and solo to the road. “You need to push all day and break the group up and whittle it down,” he stated after his third title in 2024. “You do not wish to come to the road with a bunch of men, ideally you wish to come solo or with only one different. You slowly wish to flip the tempo up, see how everybody else is doing.” The identical was true in 2026.
Consequence: SBT GRVL males’s 2026
1. Keegan Swenson
2. A. Vermeulen
3. C. Freeburn
4. H. Nelson
5. A. Roberge
SBT GRVL Girls’s race
Within the girls’s race, everybody had their eye on Unbound Gravel winner Sofia Gómez Villafañe. The Specialised Off-Street rider arrived because the pre-race favorite and former Steamboat winner, but it surely was one other rider who made the decisive transfer of the day.
Sarah Lange led the small group of leaders excessive of Wahooligan Cross, and with a couple of miles to go, Lange nonetheless had a niche. However then got here the charging determine of Gómez Villafañe. A two-up dash appeared imminent, however Gómez Villafañe had different concepts. The Specialised Off-Street rider launched simply inside the ultimate kilometre and Lange had no reply. Gómez Villafañe took the win with Lange in second, and US gravel nationwide champion Lauren Stephens in third.
For Gómez Villafañe, profitable SBT GRVL was about greater than the place on the outcomes sheet. Actually, she nearly did not line up for the race, saying, “Bodily and mentally you do not all the time get to point out up at 100% for occasions, and that is kinda what I felt right here. As soon as I acquired into Cow Creek, I discovered the Sofia that I do know, the Sofia that is aware of the best way to race onerous.”
Consequence: Sea Otter Gravel girls’s 2026
1. Sofía Gómez Villafañe
2. S. Lange
3. L. Stephens
4. P. Onweller
5. C. Decker