The Dane won the elite men’s Gravel World Championships in Nannup, Western Australia, on Sunday, beating defending champion Florian Vermeersch and Britain’s Connor Swift in a four-rider sprint. Then he explained that sprinting wasn’t really his thing.
An awkward announcement for everyone he had just outsprinted.
After 144 kilometres and four hours, nine minutes and five seconds, Bak Klaris had a rainbow jersey, Vermeersch had silver, Swift had bronze and fellow Dane Mads Würtz Schmidt had the particularly unrewarding job of finishing fourth in a group of four. All received the same finishing time. Only one received the wardrobe upgrade.
“I can’t believe it right now,” Bak Klaris said afterwards. Understandable. Winning a world title is a lot to process before you have even dealt with your shoes.
His ambitions had been slightly more modest.
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“I was always having the podium in my mind,” he explained in the post-race interviews. Getting into a small front group had made a medal seem possible. Gold was a rather generous improvement on the original brief.
Getting there required considerably more than waiting around for a sprint. Early escapees Lukas Pöstlberger, Jenson Young and Peter Schulting built an advantage approaching three minutes, leaving the riders behind with a lengthy pursuit. Denmark contributed heavily to bringing the race back together. Eventually, the contest narrowed to Bak Klaris, Würtz Schmidt, Vermeersch and Swift.
Two Danes against a Belgian and a Briton looked like a handy numerical advantage. But the arrangement came with a detail that would have complicated any tidy team-tactics diagram.
“I paid my own trip,” Bak Klaris pointed out.
He explained that he and Würtz Schmidt had discussed their approach before the start: each would pursue his own result, helping the other where it also made tactical sense. Neither had arrived with an agreement to spend the afternoon as the other’s domestique.
National colours, individual ambitions, separate travel arrangements. Gravel continues to find ways of making a world championship sound faintly like organising a group holiday.
Their shared nationality nevertheless became useful when Würtz Schmidt slid out on a late corner. Bak Klaris eased his contribution, giving his compatriot a chance to return and leaving the others to take responsibility. Helping a countryman and saving energy happened to point in the same direction. No lengthy team meeting required.
Bak Klaris described the finale as “hectic”. That covers a crash, regrouping and the realisation that a world title was about to be settled by whoever had anything left in their legs.
Swift tried a late acceleration, but Bak Klaris followed. The Briton then found himself leading the group towards the finish, with the Dane positioned behind him. Bak Klaris credited that wheel with allowing him to preserve enough energy for what he called a “small last kick”. It carried him past Swift and into the rainbow jersey.
Small is doing considerable work in that description. Most riders would happily devote an entire winter to acquiring one.
The victory also gave the men’s championship its first winner characterised as a gravel specialist, after road professionals had claimed the previous editions. Bak Klaris had already demonstrated his form by winning the Halmstad qualifier two weeks earlier. This was a surprise result from a rider with good reasons to believe he belonged at the front.
Asked what becoming world champion would mean for him, his response was refreshingly free of rehearsed brand messaging.
“I have no idea,” he said, adding: “I’ve never tried it before.”
Fair enough. He can work out the implications later. For now, Magnus Bak Klaris is world champion and anyone racing him might want a second opinion on that supposedly unremarkable sprint.