Sofía Gómez Villafañe heads to Unbound Gravel with shift from MTB to gravel

Sofía Gómez Villafañe doesn’t shy away from any hurdles, having earned a spot on the Tokyo Olympic Games mountain bike team for Argentina and then winning the insanely intense Cape Epic the next year with Haley Batten. In her first ride at Unbound Gravel 200 last year, the longest one-day race of her career, she won.

The 29-year-old embarked into gravel racing just two years ago, winning in her first outing at Crusher in the Tushar, located on familiar high desert terrain a few hundred miles south where she resides part of the year in Heber City.

But ride 200 miles at Unbound Gravel? That “silly 200-mile bike race in Kansas” was not even close to her radar at the time. Then Villafañe accepted an invitation to ride in the inaugural Life Time Grand Prix off-road series last year, and Unbound Gravel 200 was a requirement for competitors. She changed her reference to the event once she conquered the muddy edition, calling it “monumental”.

"I was here to definitely prove a point. I wanted to show that mountain bikers can go fast and go long," Gomez said at the finish line last year. "I was going to be stoked to just to win a Life Time Grand Prix race, but to come out with the overall... it's a true testament to the hard work I have put in."

The 2022 women’s champion blitzed the women’s field with a nine-minute margin over the 2021 defending champ Lauren De Crescenzo. In the first 40 miles of the endurance battle across Kansas prairie Villafañe rode at the front of the race with many of the elite men, saying “because I had made this heavy hitter selection I was set up to win the biggest gravel race in the world”.

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Villafane went on to finish second overall in the Life Time Grand Prix series, four points behind winner Haley Smith. She said she’s ready for a second crack at Unbound Gravel and has embraced gravel in a sport seeing dominance from mountain bike specialists like her and Smith. In fact six of the top 10 women in last year’s Grand Prix are mountain bikers.

“There is definitely a split within the MTB community when it comes to gravel. Half of the elite field is embracing gravel racing and the other half are extremely against it so it has been interesting to see how athletes have changed their schedules in 2023 to either race more gravel or commit to not racing any gravel,” Villafañe told Cyclingnews.

“That being said, for those that have embraced this new discipline, we find the transition from MTB to gravel a pretty smooth one as all we have really needed to do is nail down our fueling strategies and increase the volume a little bit more in order to be competitive.”

So far this year Villafañe has won three events - Belgian Waffle Ride Scottsdale, Fuego MTB XL at Sea Otter Classic and Whiskey 50. The Fuego MTB victory put her in the lead of the Grand Prix standings, which this year features a 70-rider field of 35 women and 35 men. Riders are required to complete five of seven events in the series with Unbound Gravel 200 a required race.

“I am currently planning to attend all the events. We do get to drop two, so we'll just have to see how the season plays out,” she admitted, noting she had a reduced calendar from what she did last year, which included UCI cross-country races and additional off-road races before Unbound.

“My reduced schedule isn’t so much about my Unbound Gravel prep as it’s more of a focused approach to my racing calendar. I overextended myself last year with racing across multiple disciplines and I just ended up not being excited to race near the end of the season. This year I am racing a lot less and really looking forward to being at the start line for each of the races I am scheduled to attend.”

The 29-year-old didn’t win Cape Epic this year, but used it for spring fitness and found a last-minute teammate with Katerina Nash, whom she called “a legend”.

“It was such an honor to race the Epic with Katerina Nash. She is such a legend and gave everything she had day in and day out which is all you can ask of your partner in such race,” Villafañe told Cyclingnews.

“The only thing she had to gain from doing that race was to say that she had done it for me. I still recall Katerina saying that if the race was a true key factor in my fitness and helping me achieve my 2023 goals that she would be more than happy to come suffer with me for eight days in South Africa.”

While the Grand Prix is a goal for the Argentina-US dual citizen, she’d also like to improve on her 12th place finish at last year’s UCI Gravel World Championships in Italy in the fall. Gravel is her go-to now, and any return to cross country for the Olympic Games will happen after Paris.

“I am targeting the UCI Gravel World Championships in Italy this year. I got outsmarted last year and made a lot of tactical errors that should have not have happened so I am looking forward to getting another opportunity at that race,” she said.

“I was considering going to Pan American Championships in Brazil at the end of April to try to qualify Argentina into the Paris 2024 games but due to the selection process on how the Olympic spot would be given out, in the case the country got one, that would be extremely difficult for me to pursue with my shift in gravel racing. So I decided that I will not be chasing a spot at the Paris 2024 Olympics.”