Life Time recently announced the rosters for the new season of the Life Time Grand Prix, with familiar names and some fresh faces among the 44 riders who made the initial cut. (Three more men's and women's riders will be added as wild card entrants after Unbound Gravel; more on that below.)
With that mind, we're taking a closer look at the lineups and particularly the newcomers set to compete from Sea Otter to Big Sugar in 2026.
If you need a quick Life Time Grand Prix refresher (or never really knew much to begin with), we've got you covered with a quick primer below. Everyone else can jump ahead to the rosters.
Life Time Grand Prix 101
The Life Time Grand Prix is the biggest stage for gravel and off-road racing. Not only does it feel that way – the numbers also back it up, as my analysis of gravel live stream viewership data recently showed.
The core idea of the LTGP is to create a competitive off-road racing series in the United States with global recognition. To that end, the Grand Prix consists of six races, three gravel events and three MTB events – two of which fall in the category of races that my friend Holy Spirit of Gravel has dubbed "Xtreme Gravel," i.e. mountain bike races with relatively few technical sections. The litmus test: If a drop-bar MTB is a good bike choice, it’s Xtreme Gravel.
LTGP Gravel Races:
- Sea Otter Gravel
- Unbound 200
- Big Sugar
LTGP MTB (or Xtreme Gravel) Races:
- Leadville 100 MTB (XG)
- Chequamegon (XG)
- Little Sugar (MTB)
While each event in the series is open to anyone who wants to race (or who wins a lottery ticket in case of the biggest races like Unbound or Leadville), the Grand Prix itself is limited to the 25 riders who are officially admitted to the series. These riders fight for the victories in the six races and for the overall title of the GP.
Some 💰 to race for
There is also a considerable amount of money on the line. The prize purse for the upcoming season totals US$590,000. Of that, $350,000 is allocated for the top 10 overall finishers of the series, divided equally between men and women. (Other competitors receive $2,500 provided they finish at least three of the events.) The winners will receive $50,000 each. The remaining prize money is allocated to the individual races – $30,000 per event except Unbound, which has a $60,000 purse – and can be won by non-LTGP contenders as well.
Getting in
A few riders automatically qualified for the upcoming season: the top five finishers of this year’s LTGP overall and the male and female winners of the U23 competitions that Life Time introduced for the 2025 season. This adds up to six riders on each side, men and women.
A few days ago, Life Time’s Selection Committee – which consists only of LTGP executives – selected 16 men and women, respectively, using their official selection process (which I discussed here and here). If you're counting along, that makes 22 riders each for a total of 44. And that’s the number of riders that the LTGP season will start with.
Why? Because the final three spots in each field will go to so-called Wild Card Athletes, an instrument introduced last season. The Wild Cards are battled for by all the riders who applied to the series, didn’t get in, but checked the box that they’d compete for it if not admitted. The Wild Cards will be handed out to the three best-placed men and women after Unbound, the second race of the season.
(We learned right away that this can be a very useful mechanism this year. The men’s overall winner, Cameron “Cam” Jones, only got into the GP via a Wild Card.)
Alex Hunt
Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s look at the rosters.
The LTGP 2026 Women’s Roster
First, the six auto-qualifiers we already knew would be in (unless they had opted not to compete in the 2026 GP, which nobody did):
- Sofia Gómez Villafañe
- Cecily Decker
- Melisa Rollins
- Alexis Skarda
- Cecile Lejeune
- Ruth Holcomb (U23 winner)
No surprises so far. Onto the 16 admissions (in alphabetical order; newly admitted riders are marked with an asterisk; if a rider competed in the GP before, but wasn’t in the last season, I put the years in which they were in the series in brackets).
- Morgan Aguirre (*)
- Lauren de Crescenzo
- Maude Farrell (2022, 2023)
- Stella Hobbs
- Rosa Klöser (*)
- Sarah Lange
- Emma Langley (*)
- Karolina Migon (*)
- Paige Onweller
- Hannah Otto
- Hayley Preen
- Ruby Ryan
- Samara Sheppard
- Courtney Sherwell
- Lauren Stephens (2024)
- Sarah Sturm (2022-24)
Boy, that is a stacked field!
The New Faces
Let’s take a closer look at the new additions. To have a bit of fun while doing so, we'll group them into tiers:
- Heavy Hitters, the obvious contenders for the overall and race wins.
- Dark Horse Contenders, a tier below the Heavy Hitters, but we can still expect stellar performances and maybe a race win here and there.
- Surprise, Surprise, riders whose performances are harder to forecast.
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