The final vote was unanimous, but the decision Tuesday by Routt County Commissioners to approve an event permit for the 2025 SBT GRVL race was anything but easy. It came after what SBT GRVL owner and co-founder Amy Charity called an “intense” public meeting in front of a packed house of residents both for and against the event, and on the heels of over a year of turmoil over the race’s impact on the rural Colorado county.
“We’re relieved,” Charity told Escape Collective on Wednesday morning. “Everyone on the team is just taking a deep breath. We’re thrilled, but we did not go into yesterday knowing what the outcome would be.”
At stake was nothing less than the survival of one of the premier events on the US alternative racing calendar. While not part of the Life Time Grand Prix, SBT GRVL, which started in 2019, quickly became a must-do event for both top pros who compete in that series and enthusiasts. Its 2024 edition featured 3,000 entrants (registration is capped) and many of the names that regularly top results listings in the Grand Prix, including Keegan Swenson, Sofia Gomez Villafane, Lauren Stephens and Peter Stetina.
And while the international snowsports destination of Steamboat Springs is well-equipped to welcome those visitors, the race’s popularity didn’t sit well with everyone, in particular longtime residents outside town limits who took issue with disrespectful behavior from some participants like trespassing and littering, and days-long road access issues that interrupted crucial late-summer farming and ranching operations.
While Charity and her team worked to address those and the 2024 event went off with markedly fewer complaints, a late wrinkle arose when law enforcement – specifically the Routt County Sheriff and the Colorado State Patrol – brought up safety concerns in the weeks after the event.
As reported in the Steamboat Pilot & Today, at a mid-September meeting to discuss the proposed 2025 event, State Patrol Captain Ryan Parker laid down an ultimatum: if SBT GRVL continued to run as a race, with prize money, the State Patrol would not be able to issue a permit, as it requires competitive events to be run on closed courses. (As with many events, SBT GRVL requires multiple permits from municipal and county authorities, as well as any state or federal agencies whose land the course uses or, like State Patrol, are involved in traffic management.)
That left Charity scrambling to come up with a proposal, on roughly a week’s notice, for how to meet those demands. She said to do so, the team went back to the event’s core values (namely fun, safety and inclusivity) and on September 25 presented the plan: SBT GRVL would split into two days, with a non-competitive ride on Saturday (capped at 1,800 participants to comply with a directive from the Commissioners) and a race on Sunday, with 750 participants on a closed, circuit-style course.
“We think our solution checks all the boxes,” she said to Escape. “One, minimizing the impact on the rural community, but as important, still having that positive economic and social impact on Steamboat. We’ll still have our expo on Yampa Street. We’ll still have our hillclimb. And we’ll have the same level of support [for both events].” Ride participants “will still have number plates; it’s just not a ride that is going to have a podium and prizes.”
The race itself will change dramatically as well. Charity says that pros have been asking for a closed circuit for a long time, and with amateur fields planned as well, that will let enthusiast riders have the same kind of experience. Pro men and women will have separate starts, and Charity said the circuit-style course lowers the logistical and technical challenges around media coverage, namely live-streaming.
There are downsides. A circuit course could make it tougher to manage fields as the pro riders lap amateur entrants. And with about 400-500 fewer entrants, SBT loses an equal amount of revenue. Entrants themselves will have to pick between doing the non-competitive ride or the race; Charity doesn’t anticipate double entries. (After the scramble to come up with the plan, SBT GRVL is still sorting out the specifics of how registration – lottery? First come, first served? – will work.)
Finally, there’s a major shift in dates, from its former late-August home to June 28-29. That’s because of concerns about overlapping with August’s Routt County Fair and haying season, a critical time for ranchers. But Charity is pretty upbeat about the new dates. A longtime Steamboat resident, Charity admitted that while early June can be unpredictable, “the two best months in Steamboat are June and September. [June] is very green, the rivers are flowing, wildflowers are blooming, it’s an absolutely stunning time of year.”
Shifting from the August time slot also means a lower risk of wildfire impacts and less competition with other events; the new date is just a few weeks after Unbound, and riders are no longer forced to choose between doing SBT and the Leadville 100 (or doing the “Leadboat” double), or trying to recover from the week-long Breck Epic, both of which immediately preceded SBT on the calendar. On the other hand, it means a race-specific trip for pros, as there are no other marquee events to bundle together into a Colorado swing.
But all those concerns can be handled, Charity thinks. The biggest question is whether even these latest changes will fully satisfy the critics and allow the controversy over the event to subside. Based on the skeptical response from some residents during the public comment portion of the meeting, that’s far from assured. As Charity noted, “This issue is deeper than us; it’s what is happening with agriculture and recreation and growth in mountain towns. There are some big changes happening.” SBT GRVL has a reprieve and will run in 2025. That’s enough for now. Time will tell if it will be in the future too.
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