Cyclocross riders follow "where the money is" and make their debut at Unbound Gravel 200

Amanda Nauman, Caroline Mani, Raylyn Nuss, Kerry Werner and many other take on gravel as it's a chance to make a living for many cyclocross riders. Lately, it seems that the popularity of cyclocross seems to be fading as the discipline's biggest stars Mathieu van der Poel and Wout Van Aert are shifting towards road more and more. On the other side Gravel, especially in North America is on uprise.

"I thought putting my name in the Life Time Grand Prix. It seems like it's the 'hot thing' to do at the moment and they do a great job at promoting it," says Mani.

"When you have six rows deep of people screaming and cheering and you can kind of feed off of that energy," Nuss observed. "Gravel is a little more soul-searching. You dig deep and you go into dark places at times."

"I think the biggest reason is sponsor requests/opportunities. Unfortunately, the CX vibe is not well and alive in the US," Werner notes. "With gravel sucking the lifeblood out of all the other sports and USAC doing things like putting $60K up for a Gravel Nationals prize purse it seems like all other disciplines of the sport pale in comparison to the gravel craze right now."

"Cyclocross racers are just inherently bike racers and they want to make a living doing it. Ten years ago it was cyclocross. I think that everything is cyclical - it'll eventually come back and cyclocross racers can make a living just being 'cross racers again," two-times Unbound Gravel 200 champion Amanda Nauman concludes.