Within the thrice Geerike Schreurs has raced Unbound Gravel, the race has resulted in a dash end twice.
Each instances, she completed second.
Saturday’s runner-up end left the Dutch rider visibly emotional after one other near-miss at gravel racing’s marquee occasion. Regardless of sturdy outcomes all through the season — together with success within the UCI Gravel Collection and a podium at The Gralloch — Schreurs remains to be chasing a breakthrough victory on the sport’s greatest races.
“The dream is to win this race sometime,” Schreurs mentioned after serving to the Specialised Off-Highway staff safe a one-two end behind teammate Sophia Gomez Villafañe. “However yeah, two instances second place. That’s form of the story of my life.”
Like her second-place end in 2024, Schreurs once more discovered herself in a decreased group dash on the finish of one among gravel racing’s most demanding occasions. And like final 12 months, victory narrowly slipped away.
The 2026 version was made even more durable by brutal muddy sectors that turned the race into an attritional battle lengthy earlier than the end in Emporia.
“It was so exhausting,” Schreurs mentioned. “We encountered mud for the primary time about 30 kilometers in and after that it was relentlessly exhausting. However I used to be all the time properly positioned close to the entrance, and on the moments the place it mattered most.”
Schreurs spent a lot of the day within the breakaway and finally took issues into her personal fingers when cooperation within the entrance group started to fade.
“At one level we have been using with an enormous group, after which half the group did not work. That’s tremendous annoying,” she mentioned. “So then I believed, properly, I’m simply going to push the tempo.”
It proved to be one of many defining strikes of the race, lowering the entrance group to a smaller and extra dedicated choice that stayed clear into the ending chute.
However as soon as the riders made the ultimate left-hand flip onto the ending straight, the result felt virtually inevitable.
“After all I needed to win,” Schreurs mentioned. “However this was agreed beforehand, that the end could be for Sophia [Gomez Villafañe], and I’m completely satisfied she was capable of end it off, and I’m completely satisfied I may full the rostrum with one, two.”
Schreurs tried to assault earlier than the dash however couldn’t make the transfer stick.
“I used to be going to attempt to assault,” she mentioned. “However yeah, sadly it didn’t work. Wanting again, I believe I ought to have began the dash a bit earlier, however I acquired boxed in a bit of.”
Even with one other near-miss, Schreurs mentioned she was pleased with the staff consequence after Specialised dominated the ladies’s race — and swept the lads’s podium aboard the brand new S-Works Crux.
“It was an excellent good weekend for the Specialised staff,” she mentioned. “And I’m extremely proud to be a part of it and concerned in it.”
Nonetheless, Schreurs acknowledged that lastly turning second place into victory could require one other step mentally as a lot as bodily.
“I’ve labored rather a lot on the psychological facet,” she mentioned. “However I believe I nonetheless must consider in myself a bit extra.”
Requested whether or not she would return to Unbound to chase victory once more subsequent 12 months, Schreurs was uncertain.
“Who is aware of,” she mentioned. “Possibly I’ll come again subsequent 12 months. Who is aware of.”