Michael Garrison (MGR p/b NICH SpeedClub) narrowly edged Andrew l'Esperance (Forward Racing) on the uphill sprint to win a second time at the 100-mile Homegrown Gravel Adventure in Franklin, Georgia. Lauren De Crescenzo (Factor-The Feed-Castelli-Maxxis-Wahoo-PERC Coffee) rode solo for 85 miles to repeat as the elite women's champion on Saturday.
The men's field also included former Unbound Gravel 200 winner Ian Boswell, last year's Homegrown podium finisher Andy Scarano, US cyclocross specialist Andrew Dillman and former US Pro criterium champion Ty Magner, all eager to ride outside under sunny skies on a challenging course and go for a share in a $10,000 prize purse.
The morning began with temperatures well below the freezing mark and organisers put the race's motto to the test, "US Grade-A gravel that's always fresh and never frozen". The week before, seven inches of rain soaked the dirt roads and washed out a section of the course along the Chattahoochee River, but riders found limited muddy sections on a route with 80% gravel that added up to 8,700 feet of climbing.
"This is the first official event of my season. Today I really didn't have the best legs. I thought he would have me, Andrew's strong," Garrison told Cyclingnews at the finish.
"I have days on the gravel where the legs just feel good, I did not feel that today. I knew I wanted to come to a sprint. In all the crits I raced last year, I always had a really bad sprint. So I've been doing sprints all winter. And I was like now's the time to test it out - 'here we go, don't fuck this up'."
Boswell was one of the first riders to try to break up the lead pack but pulled off the gas by mile 15. Another 15 miles on L'Esperance attacked, followed by Nathan Surowiec (Lees-McRae College) and Garrison. By mile 70 it was just Garrison and L'Esperance in at the front, Surowiec chasing and a six-rider group trying to close the gap. Surowiec finished third behind the sprinting duo, won by Garrison, while Scarano and Boswell went fourth and fifth, respectively, once breaking away from the chase group in the final eight miles.
The women's race was a compact group of 25 riders who had a dedicated start 15 minutes after the elite men. De Crescenzo said she had company for the first 15 miles, but once on the rougher Alabama roads, she picked up her pace and no one could follow.
"It was a great day, and hero dirt, fast and tacky gravel, that was pretty much perfect. Once I was out there it was like a training ride," De Crescenzo said at the finish, using this race as her tune-up for The MidSouth, where she'll go for a fourth win in a row.
Liza Ray (Solutions Cycling) accelerated with De Crescenzo and kept the leader in her sights until she dropped a chain a few miles later. Ray would finish second, 19 minutes back, while Olivia Pantano claimed her second podium in two editions, another three minutes behind Ray.
Home advantage at Homegrown
While L'Esperance travelled two days before the race from Quebec, Canada to begin his race season, tagging along with fellow Wahoo-sponsored rider Boswell, Garrison only had to drive an hour from Atlanta for the event. However, Garrison was in a hurry to get to Franklin the night before and he forgot his nutrition products at home and got up at 5:30 a.m. Saturday to make the two-hour round-trip drive back to his home before starting the race.
"I am a person who wakes up early, and so I realized at about 5:30 I had left my pack and all my [nutrition] mix in Atlanta, I drove to Atlanta and back this morning, before the race."
L'Esperance left eight feet of accumulated snow behind him for the trip to Georgia. He said the race was only his second ride outside on a bike this year, having done a short spin on Friday after weeks of indoor training.
"Getting this kind of early-season effort is really nice," L'Esperance, a Canadian marathon mountain bike champion and two-time BC Bike Race winner, told Cyclingnews, who made the move to a privateering setup this season with a new 3T gravel bike, now covered in red Georgia clay.
"This is kind of the racy gravel [from 3T]. We'll have a more aggressive one for the heavy races, like Unbound, and then also the road bike for some of the road events. Sean Fincham and I have a small private team. He's racing the Grasshopper in California right now, so we're on both sides of the country. Our first race together will be Sea Otter."
Event sponsor Wahoo Fitness encouraged several of their sponsored riders to travel to Georgia for the second-year race, formerly known as Border Wars, which has half the course in Georgia and the other half in Alabama. Boswell, the athlete liaison for Wahoo, didn't have to negotiate with l'Esperance for the trip south.
"It's the first time I've done this event and I love this event - the style of racing and the atmosphere here reminds me a lot of what I first found when I came and started doing gravel in 2021. There's just a sense of camaraderie with everyone. It's competitive, but there are no people standing on the start line 45 minutes before trying to get up front. There was a neutral section through the mud and everyone just waited for each other, essentially a sense of mutual respect," Boswell told Cyclingnews, saying he left the snow behind in Vermont to get outside.
"It might be the best event that I will do all year."
