The final 18 months has had extra twists and turns than a tv melodrama for two-time US gravel nationwide champion Lauren Stephens. After 12 years racing with UCI groups, totally on the highway, she launched into an unbiased programme to begin her 2025 off-road marketing campaign after which put the various items collectively to launch her personal multi-discipline staff, Aegis Biking Basis.
There isn’t any scarcity of victories and race podiums for the Texan, from successful the Pan American highway race championship, taking back-to-back GC wins on the UCI-level Tour of the Gila, two titles at Gravel Worlds in Nebraska and a pair of titles on the elite girls’s gravel nationals. She additionally received Levi’s GranFondo The Growler this 12 months on a solo breakaway and dominated Tour de Bloom for the GC title.
Earlier than and after the beginning line, although, the wheels have been turning to “assist develop girls riders” and provides again. It was at Tour of the Gila that the Aegis Biking Basis ‘blended staff’ debuted, with Emma Langley alongside taking third total.
Stephens confirmed to Cyclingnews that the squad, which upgraded from membership standing to USA Biking Home Elite previous to USPro Highway Championships in Might, will probably be rebranded to Subsequent Step Racing in 2026, with an even bigger roster and larger objectives
“For riders like Emma Langley and I, that is our subsequent step to offer again to girls riders and assist develop riders. Subsequent 12 months we will be referred to as Subsequent Step Racing as a result of our aim is to get riders to their subsequent step of their racing profession, like Kylee Hanel, who’s simply 19,” Stephens advised Cyclingnews.
“I’ve all the time needed to begin a staff. Final 12 months, I used to be making an attempt to place issues collectively for 2025 and it simply wasn’t coming collectively. It is not simple to search out the money to run a staff, and for Gila and Tour de Bloom, I used to be supplied the chance to place a composite staff along with the cash behind it, and we have simply type of continued to construct our staff.”
After the staff’s success at each UCI stage races, they went to USPRO Nationals the place former USPRO highway race winners Stephens and Langley raced once more, this time Stephens completed second to Kristen Faulkner (EF Training-Oatly) and Langley was sixth. Kenna Pfeiffer earned bronze within the girls’s U23 criterium and Hanel completed tenth within the girls’s U23 highway race.
The staff additionally contains Canadian Skye Pellerin, US rider Katherine Sheridan and Brit Francesca Corridor, a stage winner from Tour of the Gila. Further riders could also be added in late summer season to line up on the inaugural Maryland Biking Traditional Ladies on September 6.
“To be a part of the Maryland Biking Traditional is an opportunity to place our staff on the market for the remainder of the world to see and present them how we are able to develop riders,” Stephens added.
Leadville
Stephens just lately lined up with a number of teammates at SBT GRVL in Colorado. Whereas the privateer preparations for every rider didn’t see them in matching kits, the riders labored to assist Stephens defend her 2024 title in matching Aegis Biking Basis head bands and socks. On a scorching, sunny day on a brand new course, Stephens would end simply 31 seconds behind winner Melisa Rollins and runner-up Lauren De Crescenzo in third.
Greater than the rostrum, Stephens was impressed to see the staff’s youngest rider, Hanel, end twelfth total, simply behind gravel stalwarts Karolina Migoń, Whitney Allison and Haley Smith. It was Hanel’s first-ever gravel race, one she referred to as “the toughest race” of her life.
Whereas Hanel heads to Europe for racing, Stephens will deal with extra off-road races this summer season, and one “massive aim” of the 12 months, her first experience at Leadville Path 100 MTB.
Nevertheless, final weekend’s Firecracker 50 in Breckinridge, Colorado derailed Stephens from pre-Leadville in-race preparations, as she clipped a tree close to the top of the race. She went third to Rollins, but additionally got here away with seven stitches and a gentle concussion, inflicting her to overlook this weekend’s excessive elevation climbing contest at Utah’s Crusher within the Tushar on Saturday.
“Sadly, I used to be wanting ahead to doing Crusher, 10,000 toes of climbing and 60 miles, it is proper up my alley. I am hoping to do Foco Fondo [in Colorado] subsequent weekend,” mentioned Stephens, who final raced in Tushar Mountains in 2019 and completed second.
“I all the time mentioned once I stopped racing, which means cease being on the WorldTour racing in Europe and backing off a bit of bit, I’d do Leadville. So Leadville has all the time been the massive aim this 12 months. , I actually take pleasure in excessive elevation. I really like climbing. I additionally simply love new challenges. One thing like Leadville is exterior of something I’ve ever completed, so it is simply an thrilling solution to have a brand new problem.”
At Leadville she is going to face Rollins once more, the ladies’s defending champion, in addition to 12,480 toes of elevation acquire, all above the ten,000-foot mark on the Colorado city. It is extra twists and turns for the season, however she simply calls it a ” new problem”.
