Thijs Zonneveld reveals the extreme challenges of Unbound: "Like riding the 1912 Tour de France"

This weekend, the well-known gravel race Unbound is scheduled in the United States, where a significant number of Dutch participants will be at the start. One of them is Dutch journalist/cyclist Thijs Zonneveld, who extensively previewed the 320-kilometer race over impassable American roads in his podcast In het Wiel.

Zonneveld is at the start of Unbound for the second consecutive year, so he already has some idea of what to expect. "This year we are heading north, last year it was south. It's really in the middle of nowhere, you ride for hours through a landscape without any villages or supermarkets. There's just nothing there," explains the columnist.

"For Unbound, you need to be physically strong, have a strong head, and be able to cope with the conditions," he continues. "It's super hot, the course can change quickly due to the weather, and you get flats easily. On Tuesday, during a 120-kilometer reconnaissance ride with six people, we had eleven or twelve flats. You're just racing over such sharp stones."

Continue reading below the photo.

Zonneveld compares Unbound to the Tour of 1912

Choosing the right equipment is crucial. "I want to take a risk. There are guys like Matej Mohoric competing, who is obviously a lot better. Stronger, more skillful, faster. If I do the same as him, I'll never beat him. But this is Unbound and it's such a crazy race, so you start thinking about ways it could work," says Zonneveld, who is considering swapping tires between certain sections. "The risk you take with that is that it costs more time and effort."

"Everything has to be perfect at Unbound," Zonneveld continues. "I notice that I approach it differently than last year when I was also very concerned about not having bad luck. It's so long and race situations can constantly change. Laurens ten Dam, for example, is very good at this. He's the only one who has been in all the finals. That's very impressive, especially considering the luck factor. How you handle it is very important."

"It's a kind of pre-war race, like riding the Tour of 1912," he adds. "But with today's equipment, without support cars or information and the like. That's why you always have to keep riding, and that's also the beauty of it. It feels like a kind of desert. Jasper Ockeloen compared it to a frog in boiling water: if you heat the water gradually, a frog doesn't realize it's in boiling water. That's how it feels here too: if you go too hard, you're boiling yourself."