"We're going to stick to road racing!": Matej Mohorič gets stuck in the mud at Unbound Gravel, suffers cracked rim and puncture

Matej Mohorič and his Bahrain Victorious teammates travel home from Unbound Gravel with stories to tell (and bikes to clean), the gravel world champion joking that he'll "stick to road racing" after a weekend of mechanicals and mud that'll be all too familiar for any of you here in the UK who dare to venture away from paved routes at any time of the year except the peak of summer.

The Slovenian and his teammates Matevž Govekar and Lukas Wiśniowski were in trouble from the recon, a video uploaded to Instagram showing the team struggling to get to grips with the famous Kansas mud, Govekar seen resorting to scraping his new wider tyres 'clean' with some sort of stake or sign, claggy mud filling whatever tyre clearance he had moments earlier.

 

 

 

 

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"It was not quite what we expected," Mohorič admitted, explaining they'd ordered wider tyres in the hopes of taming the "peanut butter" mud. After just "20 metres or even less" things weren't looking good, Mohorič joking everything was "under control" and there should be no concerns ahead of the 327km race.

This is the part where the narrator would interject to predictably suggest things were not under control, the winner of the 2022 edition of Milan-San Remo and a three-time Tour de France stage victor abandoning the following day's race after numerous punctures and a cracked rim.

 

 

 

 

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"We are going to stick to road racing, guys," Mohorič joked in a video uploaded to Instagram by the event's organisers. "It's a beautiful day for cycling, beautiful weather, not so beautiful surface, could be more smooth. It's pretty rocky and my sidewall doesn't like it, but hopefully the second tube of the day will hold even though I cracked my rim hitting a rock.

"Now we go the short way to the second checkpoint and then we get a shower and something nice to eat..."

EF Education-EasyPost's Lachlan Morton won the elite men's race, beating former Sunweb rider and Giro stage winner Chad Haga, while Rosa Klöser won the women's pro race, Morton rocking an aero helmet for those marginal gains.

 

 

 

 

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Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas, who last weekend we spotted riding an unreleased Canyon Aeroad at the Monaco Grand Prix (a bike seen this morning with Movistar's riders at the Dauphiné) finished second in the men's 30-39 category for the 100-mile route.