After a long fight with local landowners (moving the course, changing start times, eliminating organizing pre-rides) and despite the estimated $5 million boost to the local economy, it seems that SBT GRVL in its current form has heard its death knell.
Tl;dr: the state patrol and sheriff’s department no longer want to support the race in its current form, so they’ll be capping the participants at 1,800 and turning the race into more of a gran fondo without podium placements on Saturday, with a closed-course circuit race on Sunday.
by soaringfreedom
3 Comments
Rode it this year and definitely saw this coming. People were crossing the yellow line into oncoming traffic during the neutral rollout before the race even hit gravel. Sounded like it was a small but vocal group of ranchers who were against it. Most people in the community really liked the event. Real bummer bc those roads are empty for 99% of the time and now that people from the town of steamboat, who contribute to the road maintenance through taxes, want to use them for a day, it’s a huge problem for some people.
Why is 1,800 participants a death knell? That’s still a pretty huge number of people.
Wow! Listened to a podcast with the founder/organizer – seemed so admirable.