USA's Gravel Champion on Paris-Roubaix dream and Mathieu van der Poel: "He's proved he's incredibly dominant on a mountain bike, on a cross bike, on a road bike, anything with two wheels"

Brennan Wertz became Gravel national champion in the USA this year and has gained a lot of notoriety in the national and international scene. He has talked about the Gravel World Championships won by Mathieu van der Poel but also of his dream of racing Paris-Roubaix in the World Tour peloton.

However, despite being a top rider in the discipline, it remains a tough job to make a living to be able to fully focus on gravel - even in the USA where financial means are far superior than in most other places where the sport is developed. "I would say the prize money this year, I got some prize money at nationals and some stuff like that, if you do bonuses for afferent results that really helps but I try to look at that as bonus and don't factor that into the budget," Wertz said in the Odd Tandem podcast with Jens Voigt and Bobby Julich. 

"The way it works for me is I have multiple sponsors and they provide me with accommodation and equipment, and also financial support - they basically pay a lump sum, and then I'm on my own to manage it all. I'm booking all the flights myself, all the accommodation, trying to be economical in all of that..."

Wertz is a talented rider but at the Gravel World Championships he was faced with another set of talented riders who dominated the event. The Belgians and Dutch in particular, with plenty road and cyclocross specialists battling for the top places and ultimately with Mathieu van der Poel taking the win. There is a still a split in the US scene when it comes to "what gravel is", with a side accepting of the professionalization and internationalization of the discipline, whilst others still enjoy more the traditional side that developed in the late 2010's.

"I love it. For me I really look at it as the more the merrier," Wertz says, being clear on what he enjoys the most. "Van der Poel he's a legend, Marianne Vos... They're just two absolute legends not just in road cycling or a specific discipline of cycling, they're legends in the sport of cycling. I've thought about of van der Poel a lot and I always thought about him at a lot of these raced and just wondered 'what would it look like if he showed up'. He's proved he's incredibly dominant on a mountain bike, on a cross bike, on a road bike, anything with two wheels he's pretty incredible with".

Wertz believes that regardless of the competition, there is benefit to hosting riders of such talent and notoriety in the gravel events: "It elevates what everyone's doing when riders of that caliber come in and check out what we're doing [...] It really just elevates it, it makes us all better and I think it's cool when they come over. It also brings an additional level of media attention and fans to the sport as well". The 27-year old was 161st in the Gravel worlds.

He was also asked about the hypothetical scenario of moving to the World Tour, with an American team - luckily for the country, a few teams maintained their structure - and he tells that the 'Hell of the North' is an absolute favourite, even a dream to race one day: "The opportunity to race like Paris-Roubaix would be really a dream, it was cool to get a little bit of taste of some of that terrain [...] It would be a pretty hard offer to turn down".