Durango is home to a lot of the top gravel racers in the country, and now it’s home to some of the best collegiate gravel racers after the inaugural USA Cycling Collegiate Gravel National Championships in Turkey, Texas, last Saturday.
Fort Lewis College dominated the rest of the field in Texas. The Skyhawks won the omnium, and FLC sophomore Nate Meister left Texas as the collegiate men’s gravel national champion.
“It was super exciting to see how well they rode as a team, being unselfish and had a teammate win,” FLC cycling director Ian Burnett said. “It was really cool to see the men do well, and then Oona (Nelson) get second in the women’s; she’s in her first year of nursing. It was an all-around really good start to 2026.”
USA Cycling didn’t do the teams any favors with Turkey, a town of less than 400 people, as the host spot. That made it hard for travel and accommodating pre-rides, according to Burnett, but he felt like the town did a good job of making the riders feel warm and welcome.
At about 49.5 miles, the race is short for gravel standards, but it gave the riders the chance to challenge each other, especially early in the season, since there hasn’t been much racing yet in 2026, according to Burnett.
Meister won the men’s collegiate race in two hours, 20 minutes and 18 seconds. Behind him were fellow FLC riders Elliot Thorblade in second in the 75-rider field in 2:20:18, Oliver Rutberg in third in 2:20:18 and freshman Emmett McManus in fourth in 2:20:20.
About halfway through the race, Meister went off the front and broke free from the lead group of six. His fellow Skyhawks caught up with about 8 miles left, and he outlasted his training partners for the win.
“He's so strong and knows how to suffer through so much,” Burnett said about Meister. “He can put himself in that zone, compete and then maybe take it one more notch than some other riders … He’s got the skills to do it, too. He was right there in our cyclocross stuff as well.”
On the women’s side, FLC junior Oona Nelson finished second in 2:54:07. She finished behind Midwestern State University’s Emma Kasza-James, who spent most of the race on her own, finishing in 2:49.09. Fellow Skyhawk sophomore Charlotte Lehmann was only a second behind Nelson, but finished fifth out of the 25 riders in the women’s field.
“We went into it not really knowing what was going to happen, not having any gravel races before,” FLC women’s cycling head coach Brittany Cowan said. “Some girls were borrowing bikes. They all … have being training on the road over the winter … so it was really special to see them work really hard … They dug deep, they went hard, they worked together, and history was made.”
Cowan said in addition to the road training, the entire team did a mock gravel race in Durango to see who was interested, and who was the fastest on the team since the Skyhawks could only take eight men and eight women.
Since it was the first gravel collegiate national title race, Cowan reached out to a lot of people who had raced the course, which hosts the Valley of Tears gravel race. Cowan said there were some sand washes, road sections, fast and bumpy bits and some single-track.
Cowan was so proud to see how well Nelson rode, especially since Nelson said she didn’t make the best tire choice.
The Skyhawks begin the road season on March 27 in Grand Junction. FLC will host the Squawker Classic on April 4-5, and the road national championships will be on May 8-10 in Madison, Wisconsin.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
