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RACE WEEK: 26 OCTOBER – 1 NOVEMBER 2025

Raising the heat

Nedbank Gravel Burn received the perfect Christmas present near the end of December… a title sponsor! The name is still under wraps but what you might have seen is one immediate consequence of this: we announced a $150,000 prize purse for the event, making it the largest single-race prize in the history of gravel bike racing (read more HERE).

Besides the prize money, a title sponsor means we will be able to put together a significant television production, which we hope will lift the profile of the event and the country when it is aired (I’ll tell you more about the TV plans in another blog, but the bottom line for us is that prize money and TV production should never be funded by riders’ entry fees). 

This also means that South Africa will now host the two cycling events with the biggest prize purses in their disciplines – the Cape Epic for a mountain bike stage-racing and the Nedbank Gravel Burn for gravel racing. The Cape Epic quickly became known as the ‘Tour de France of mountain biking’ and we like to think that the Nedbank Gravel Burn will one day be seen as the ‘Dakar Rally of gravel biking’.

We will formally announce the sponsorship next month and are delighted to have secured the support of a company brave enough to buy into a new category in the sport – much like Absa did with the Cape Epic many years back when corporates were more inclined towards spending on soccer and golf. 

At the Epic we secured a title sponsor after three years of running the event and it took us another two to move from making a loss into a profit. Hopefully it won’t take quite as long at the Nedbank Gravel Burn! I guess we have developed quite a network over the years which – together with the team’s extensive experience on stage races – is giving us momentum.

When I launched the Epic at the age of 30, I had never worked in South Africa, so had to build a network from scratch. It is obviously different this time. Many of these contacts are people who have either ridden the Cape Epic or are involved in the industry and it has been heartening to find out that they share our optimism about the potential of gravel. 

By the way, we have not announced who the sponsor is yet because we are in the process of putting together logos with the sponsor’s name and getting our livery sorted out. That will be finished in a couple of weeks and, as I said, we will formally announce it next month. Our new partner will top our illustrious and growing sponsor list of leading brands, which already includes WeWork, Assos, Shamwari and more.

You may not be aware, but the issue of prizes has been quite a hot button for gravel races. Organisers have traditionally handed out such things as swords (the Gravel Worlds), sweaters (the Rift), belt buckles (Leadville) and rocks (Big Sugar) as prizes and Unbound, probably the biggest existing gravel race, has only recently announced that it will have a prize purse for the first time in 2025. 

There has therefore been quite a bit of pressure from professional gravel racers for prize money and we do think it is fair and appropriate to make it available for people who actually ride for a living. And having pro riders on board will obviously help build the brand, an obvious objective of ours.

That said, the essence of the Nedbank Gravel Burn will be that it is a pro-am event, with amateurs riding on the same course and conditions as the professionals and rubbing shoulders with the world’s best in the race villages afterwards. 

The thing that is sometimes forgotten in the prize money debate is that the pros are bike racers because they love riding bikes, as do the rest of us. Having a community of like-minded bike lovers together on their bikes in a spectacular part of the country will, we hope, make for an awesome occasion. We essentially see the Nedbank Gravel Burn as a celebration of cycling, whether you’re motivated or relaxed, first or last.

Talking of pros, we have had more interest from their ranks than we anticipated and look forward to announcing some really big names in the weeks to come – from both the gravel and road disciplines (not to mention a good few of our mountain biking friends). The road racers’ season will have finished shortly before Nedbank Gravel Burn and they are dead keen to ride a gravel stage race.  I think that another factor is that World Tour riders – many of whom want to try their hands at gravel racing – have effectively been excluded from the Life Time Grand Prix series because they are not based in the US and it would be impossible for them to add six new races into an already-crowded road race calendar. Now we can look forward to fascinating and thrilling racing between the road pros and their gravel counterparts. 

It will also give the amateur riders an opportunity to meet some of the legends of the sport. 

On a personal note, I have spent the past few weeks in Switzerland and had been scheduled to be back in South Africa already. Things have taken a bit of a turn though since we received requests to host additional Firestarter events in the UK and Europe – where we meet with local cyclists to explain Nedbank Gravel Burn and answer questions – and so we were in London last week (which was a great success), and this week in Barcelona and Girona. If you haven’t already, and you’re in the area, sign up for one of them HERE.

After that we will all be back together at our desks in Cape Town, putting together what we firmly believe will be an unforgettable event for all participants. As I have said before: our key objective is to give all riders an awesome experience, on and off their bikes.

*PS: Yes, we know that the Life Time Grand Prix series of gravel races in the US does offer a bigger prize purse, but of course that’s for the whole series and to qualify you have to take part in six separate events. 

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