Life Time, house owners of the Life Time Grand Prix and all six off-road races that comprise the sequence, introduced Thursday {that a} stay broadcast for the ultimate occasion, Life Time Massive Sugar Gravel introduced by Kenetik, could be offered for everything of the 100-mile race for the primary time.
Massive Sugar Gravel takes place Saturday, October 18, in Bentonville, Arkansas, with elite males beginning at 7:25 a.m. CDT and elite girls beginning 10 minutes later. The stay broadcast, introduced by Orange Seal, will comply with each elite fields starting at 7:10 a.m. CDT and embody post-race interviews. The protection is obtainable on the official Life Time Grand Prix YouTube channel and utilizing the Life Time app, all freed from cost.
The Life Time Grand Prix can pay out a prize purse of $200,000 between the highest 10 males and high 10 girls, break up evenly, after Massive Sugar Gravel, based mostly on the very best cumulative factors of the perfect 4 of six races. Every of the six races additionally present a further $30,000 in prize cash this 12 months, for a further $180,000 on supply.
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Final 12 months, Keegan Swenson (Santa Cruz) received a 3rd consecutive elite males’s title within the Grand Prix, whereas Sofia Gomez Villafañe (Specialised Off-road) captured the elite girls’s total for a second time in three years.
The invitation-only discipline on this 12 months’s Life Time Grand Prix, which earlier within the season included 25 girls and 25 males, is now all the way down to 23 girls and 21 males who stay in competition for last scoring in 5 of the six occasions, with Massive Sugar Gravel a compulsory race.
Swenson and Villafañe are on the high of the standings headed right into a doubleheader of racing this month in Arkansas – Little Sugar MTB on October 12 and Massive Sugar Gravel six days later. Nonetheless, their leads are precariously tight, with solely two factors separating Swenson from Simon Pellaud and Torbjørn Røed, whereas Villafañe has simply two factors on Cecily Decker.
Additionally anticipated on the beginning line are 2024 Massive Sugar males’s winner Alexey Verneulen, three-time Traka 360 winner Mattia De Marchi, Chequamegon winner Melisa Rollins, and four-time Rad Filth Fest winner Lauren De Crescenzo.
This 12 months’s Massive Sugar Gravel will cowl 99.6 miles (160.3km) with nearly all of the route utilizing ‘gloriously chunky’ gravel roads, now 5.6 miles (9km) shorter than earlier than however nonetheless shut to six,200 ft (1889 metres) of climbing. Riders will compete on the same clockwise loop by means of the Ozark Mountains, crossing into southwest Missouri with the beginning/end in Bentonville.
There are two support stations on the lengthy course, each on the Missouri facet of the loop. Whereas the Pineville Support Station at mile 38 is identical, there’s a new support station at mile 74 at Rockford Grange. That is the adjustment to final 12 months’s route that goes west of the Flag Spring Conservation Space and twists south for a special strategy to cross again into Arkansas close to Pea Ridge.
In Might, over 350,000 spectators tuned in to observe a first-time stay broadcast of Unbound Gravel 200. Life Time adopted in August with one other profitable stay broadcast of the Leadville Path 100 MTB, and this would be the third race within the sequence to characteristic stay streaming from begin to end.
Following completion of each Massive Sugar races, there shall be a hard and fast end line digicam by means of the 12-hour mark so each finisher (each skilled and novice) could be seen finishing the race. Followers can even be capable of watch highlights on the official Life Time Grand Prix YouTube channel on Sunday, October 19.
