Madigan ‘Maddie’ Munro (Trek Factory Racing) and Noah Granigan (Denver Disruptors) won the Old Man Winter Bike Rally on Sunday in Lyons, Colorado.
The weather is always a variable on the front range of the Colorado Rocky mountains, and heavy snowfall in the canyons in advance of race day led organisers to adjust the 100km route to 74km. Then warming temperatures and sunny skies on Sunday quickly converted frozen paths into slippery ‘mud carnage’ for the 10th annual winter gravel event.
Granigan took the victory in 2 hours and 17 minutes, sprinting ahead of Ivan Sippy and Alexey Vermeulen at the line, the faces not distinguishable through layers of caked-on slush. Jack Spranger, who won the men’s U23 cyclocross national title in December, finished fourth, 8 seconds back, in the final pack of four.
"The 10th edition of Old Man Winter was reminiscent of watching George Hincapie race in the 2002 Paris-Roubaix," Vermeulen told Cyclingnews about the epic soggy soil that covered the riders. "Most of the race you couldn't see and you felt like the toughest person out on course... then you finish and see how many tough people there are just in Boulder!
“Quite a way to start the season. We got off to the soupiest, muddiest, peanut butteriest roads you can imagine. From the get-go, I think people were more perplexed by how hard it was to see than how hard it was to pedal,” he recounted.
“Tame” is how Vermeulen described the start of Old Man Winter on the dirt, but then conditions changed drastically with a severe thaw and fog. It was halfway through the now-74km route that seven elite men remained at the front of the field, and then the group dwindled to the final four. Granigan escaped with an acceleration across the bridge in Lyons to seal the victory.
Of the 288 riders expected to start the longer distance route, only 65% finished. A hearty herd of more than 1,000 others took the line for a shorter 50km bike ride, 10km run and other events.
Munro, a 21-year-old mountain bike athlete and college student, switched to the gravel event from what would usually be a cyclocross campaign. Last year at this time she rode as the US women’s U23 national champion at the UCI Cyclocross World Championships. She was a bronze medalist at the inaugural junior women's race at CX Worlds in 2020. This year she has focused on mountain biking, taking a World Cup podium at Mont-Sainte-Anne in October.
The Colorado Mesa University senior finished the abbreviated course in 2:59, a little more than six minutes ahead of Deanna Mayles, who repeated with second place, and Kate Cross in third.
Mayles, who finished 10th last year in the Life Time Grand Prix and was crowned ‘Ice Queen‘ for her victory at Ice Man Cometh in Michigan, described the adventure with just two words, "mud carnage".
