Brendan Johnston (Large Bikes) opened his third gravel season in the USA and took a win on the Utah Gravel Collection opener, the Salty Lizard. He now builds towards the Life Time Grand Prix and particularly some large targets at Unbound Gravel.
The US gravel scene might as soon as have delivered appreciable studying but it surely hasn’t taken lengthy for the Australian champion within the self-discipline to carve out success as an expert athlete after greater than a decade of working as an electrician whereas nonetheless accumulating a powerful record of ends in Australia.
“I went with intentions of staying there for a couple of yr and it was contact and go however I pulled it off in direction of the top of the primary yr and now I really feel established,” Johnston advised Cyclingnews in January after he gained at South Australia’s RADL GRVL.
“I really feel like I can proceed to get higher yearly in that scene. I be taught increasingly more each race.”
That’s evident in his outcomes, as he constructed by way of his first prolonged US season in 2023 to safe an total seventh-place end within the Life Time Grand Prix collection after which topped that in 2024 with fourth.
“You already know, I am 33 and nonetheless studying concerning the races and and myself and it is good to be nonetheless studying and nonetheless having fun with that a part of the racing, nonetheless with the ability to enhance,” stated Johnston of the journey that he hoped will proceed for a while.
“I feel I’ve acquired a protracted future there, nicely I hope so anyway, no less than three to 5 years or so, I feel. The scene is nice and it is one thing I wish to be a part of.”
Gravel is actually a self-discipline that fits the Australian, offering the proper assembly floor for his mixed street and mountain bike strengths, with the latter additionally giving him an additional edge within the Grand Prix series, which includes both gravel and mountain bike events. His potential to thrive was clear from a mix of outcomes that included a Melbourne to Warrnambool win on the street, Soiled Warrny victory and 6 Australian Marathon Mountain Bike titles. They have been all clear indicators of his capacity to sort out the longer gravel distances discovered within the US.
The top of these long-distance gravel races has been Unbound and Johnston is among the many who wish to make it to the summit. Luck did not run his manner in 2023, with Johnston one of many many victims of the equipment-destroying, peanut butter mud. And in 2024 he flatted out of the lead group, made it again, then acquired hit by two extra flats and was caught driving the inserts of an unrepairable tyre for a substantial interval, but nonetheless managed to cross the road in fifteenth.
The dream for 2025 is to make it two Australian winners in a row by following on from Lachlan Morton (EF Schooling-EasyPost), who claimed the 200-mile Kansas race victory in 2024.
“I’ve acquired an enormous concentrate on Unbound. I actually wish to win there and I feel I can if I’ve the suitable preparation and construct into it appropriately,” stated Johnston.
He added, once we spoke to him in late January, straight after he gained RADL GRVL, that “it is so far so good” after which he additionally went on to win the Otway Odyssey MTB Marathon in February.
That, nevertheless was just the start of the construct right into a race season which is now shifting to its US leg, beginning with the Salty Gravel victory to “open the legs” after which rapidly shifting to the Life Time Grand Prix opening spherical of Sea Otter Traditional Gravel in Monterey, California on April 10. The 200-mile Unbound Gravel will then unfold on Could 31.
“I had a gradual, gradual summer time, the slowest I’ve had for a few years, not doing Street Nationals and so on, so it has been good and I feel I’m on of first rate trajectory to possibly ship come Could, June.”
