Get Ready for the Sea Otter Classic’s First-Ever Gravel Race
The Sea Otter Classic will hold its first ever gravel race on Sunday, April 19.
The USA Cycling sanctioned event is open to pros and amateurs and features equal prize purses of $1,500 for the professional men and women.
The 40-mile race will start ahead of the cross-country mountain bike course and feature new roads not previously used at the festival.
The Sea Otter Classic, now in its 30th year, will hold its first ever timed gravel race on Sunday, April 19. The inaugural grinder will have UCI professional as well as amateur categories for women and men of all ages.
Sea Otter, which has become a popular industry and consumer bicycling show, has long been a showcase for racing of all kinds, including cross-country mountain bike, cyclocross, road, downhill, dual slalom, even e-mountain bike and Brompton racing. But until this year, the venue has never hosted an official gravel race.
“We’re kind of off the back on gravel,” said Jeffrey Frost, who directs athlete services and risk management for the Sea Otter Classic p/b Continental. “We traditionally embrace new formats, and having a gravel race is a natural thing for us to do, but the Sea Otter event doesn’t really accommodate a ‘traditional’ gravel race format. We don’t have those kinds of distances available to us. We also struggled to figure out where to plug it in to make it work because the weekend is jam packed with back to back races.”
The fix: piggyback it onto the cross-country race, which features long stretches of gravel bike friendly terrain. “We’re going to send the gravel race ahead of Sunday morning’s cross-country race at 7:40 a.m.,” Frost said.
The course will start under the Sea Otter bridge at the Laguna Seca Recreation Area. Racers will climb the infamous “corkscrew” and then traverse the challenging trails and gravel roadways of the Fort Ord National Monument before venturing into some of the more remote sections around the Monument territory that have not been used previously.
For now, the distance will be 40 miles. But the gravel course will expand in the upcoming years as Sea Otter gains access to territory around the Monument that has traditionally been off limits, Frost said.
“That was a military training base for WWII. The battleships used much of that area as target practice. The BLM [Bureau of Land Management] is remediating that area now and plans to open it to trails. So a lot of that terrain will be available to us in the next five to six years.”
The race is USA Cycling sanctioned, is open to professionals and amateurs, and will feature a wave start categorized by USA Cycling age classes. There are no field limits. Registration is $57 for amateur and $65 for professional. The pro purse is $1,500 for both men and women.
All racers will need to have a valid, current USA Cycling Racing license. Registered athletes will also receive a complimentary four-day Festival Pass for access to all the Sea Otter festivities. The 2020 Sea Otter Classic will run from Thursday, April 16 to Sunday, April 19.
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