Most people had not heard of Ivar Slik before he won Unbound Gravel 200 on Saturday. The Dutch athlete, a former professional road rider at the Continental level, put his Wilier Rave SLR, a relatively new gravel model designed for racing, to a huge test through the muddy parcours in Kansas.
Take a look at his bike in our exclusive gallery from after the finish.
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The Wilier Rave SLR was announced last fall as a gravel race bike. It seems that the Italian brand has gotten things right with it.
It has a Shimano GRX groupset with Ultegra cranks.
The final distance on Slik’s Wahoo ELEMNT BOLT computer reads 321.1 kilometers, a touch under 200 miles because of flooding on course that forced a detour, cutting 4 miles.
Participating in his first Unbound Gravel, Slik wasn’t on many people’s radar. Everyone else in the men’s top 10 had race numbers under 30.
He came prepared for a lot of flats with these tire plugs taped to his stem. Luckily it sounds like they weren’t needed.
Slik stashed food and other essentials in this streamlined bento box for quick access.
Hailing from the Netherlands, Slik is the first non-American winner of Unbound Gravel 200.
Slik, as with the women’s Unbound Gravel 200 winner Sofia Gomez Villafañe, rode with aero bars.
Schwalbe claims its new G-ONE RS tires are 20 percent faster than the G-ONE R that the brand’s athletes raced at Unbound Gravel last year.
Slik ran Look Keo road pedals, a risky choice for a muddy race like yesterday.
There was no escaping the taste of mud, especially with it coating water bottles.