There was ample pre-race hype about new equipment and the strength of the Specialized Off-road team at the 2026 Unbound Gravel 200 while the swirling around about the bigger setup under the PAS Racing collective was a little more subdued, even though defending women’s champion Karolina Migoń was back.
Still, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t plenty of tales to be told from among the teams, of both results and camaraderie. PAS Racing started with seven riders in Emporia, Kansas, and finished with two on the podium. Cecily Decker and Tobias Kongstad secured third place in both elite divisions, plus Decker moved to second overall in the Life Time Grand Prix standings.
Migoń surrendered to mud and mechanical issues in the opening 20 miles for a DNF “because I simply couldn’t pedal anymore”, and Magnus Bak Klaris also pulled out. Simen Nordahl Svendsen fought on for 18th, and is now 14th in the Life Time Grand Prix men’s standings. While the teamwork shone brightly as the tandem of USA’s Morgan Aguirre and Germany’s Romy Kasper battled through a crash, mechanicals, rainstorms, a long delay for a train before continuing on for a “best of the rest” sprint for the top 12.
Through blurry eyes, stinging and red from all the muck splattered across the 207-mile (333km) odyssey on Saturday, Romy told Cyclingnews her first Unbound was quite an eye-opener, and a seventh place was a reward that might just bring her back.
“So I came here and was like ‘what am I doing, 330k’s racing?’ I was pro 17 years on the road, but 300 kilometres are just another level. I wasn’t sure how I can handle the legs, but it worked pretty well,” Kasper told Cyclingnews at the finish.
Kasper recently won her first gravel competition, Gravel One Fifty, a 150km Gravel World Series race in the Netherlands, and has three other top 10s. However, even beyond the distance, Unbound Gravel was a different challenge altogether for Kasper, who raced in the top-tier of road racing with teams like Boels-Dolmans, Jumbo-Visma and Human Powered Health.
Rain changed the complexion of the race, with all the elite riders facing struggles with mud in the first 15 miles. Kasper had to let the rest of the front riders go as she cleared debris and wet dirt from her bike. At the first Feed Zone she and her bike got a fast spray of water, and the she ‘went all in’ with a group to get within six minutes of the leaders, which included Decker, with 124 miles to go (82 miles done).
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“Then the real battle began. From km 132 onwards, the conditions got brutal. Rain, mud, headwinds, crosswinds. Hours of riding covered in dirt, barely able to see at times, while our group slowly got smaller and smaller,” she said on Instagram Monday.
She said that she had then come down about 40 miles later.
“Around km 190, I crashed hard at high speed. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if my race was over,” she continued to explain in her diary recap.
“As if the crash wasn’t enough, heavy rain started pouring down shortly after. We got stopped by a train, stood there freezing, soaked, and suddenly finishing didn’t seem so important anymore. But sometimes you don’t need to decide about the finish line—you only need to decide about the next kilometre. I told myself I would ride to the next feed at km 240 and reassess there.”
After the delay for the freight train, which lasted more than six minutes, she picked up Aguirre who had stopped to fix a rear wheel issue and the two rode together to the third and final feed zone. It was Kasper who became recharged and motivated Aguirre, who was looking for points in the Life Time Grand Prix. The two talked and Kasper said she would not leave her teammate behind.
The final 58 miles was a “fight of pure determination” according to Kasper.
“We kept catching riders one after another. Even when I felt completely empty around km 270, I refused to give in. In the end, I even won the sprint of our group to take seventh place,” Kasper wrote.
“After more than 330km of racing, mud, rain, crashes, doubts, and countless highs and lows, I’m super happy with this Top 10.”
Not one but two trains
Kasper also helped Aguirre not only make it to the finish in 11th, but move to a tie for 10th, with Samara Sheppard, in the Grand Prix standings.
“Romy said at the [final] feed ‘we’re gonna finish together’,” Aguirre told Cyclingnews after crossing the line in Emporia, smiling at her teammate, through equally bleary eyes and with a mud-crusted face.
“I think with the conditions the way that they were, it was survival. I mean, we’re riding without glasses, you can’t see. I’m a little worried about how much cow poop I swallowed. If I get sick, I would not be surprised. I mean, it was torrential downpours, lightning, thunder.”
The Portland, Oregon native is used to rain, but it wasn’t just the elements of nature which stopped her progress multiple times.
“I do understand that there is only so much they can do to actually stop the trains, I do think the fact that there are no ways to make a fair race afterwards are a bit crazy. I was stopped twice. The first time I was just before feed zone 2,” she said, connecting with Lauren Stephens there.
“The second time was the exceptionally long train with Lauren De Crescenzo. We had broken away from this larger group, with Lauren Stephens, LDC and myself, dropped Lauren in the middle and then just before almost catching Sarah Lange and Haley Preen, we saw the train and we all ended up stopped.
“Then after a few minutes we were caught by everyone behind and then some, we maybe were eight at that point. This is when I got really sad and frustrated. I think to have to ride Unbound on a good day is really hard, but then to have to do it in these conditions is another thing, [and] to quite literally have road-block after road-block.”
After crossing the tracks, the next blockage was a stop for a rear wheel puncture. That is when Kasper joined her teammate and the two made up ground, it was only the breakaway of five and De Crescenzo they could not catch.
“From 26th position to fighting for seventh, I’m happy that I kept pushing with everything that happened. There’s so much power in knowing that the brain is so deeply connected to the physical aspect of this sport. Sometimes an equally scary fact too,” Aguirre said.
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