Winning Unbound and Goal Setting for Gravel Racing with Sofía Gómez Villafañe

0:02Over the past two decades, gravel cycling has exploded in popularity and competitiveness. In 2022, Sofía Gómez Villafañe made a splash when she won a prestigious race called Unbound on her very first attempt. Every year, thousands of cyclists convene for this event in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. The dry soil and rocky terrain there make an ideal proving ground for gravel cycling. Winning Unbound Position Sophia is one of the best gravel racers in the U.S., but her journey to the top has been a little unconventional. She started competing as a teenager with a bike her brother found on Craigslist.

0:44I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

1:01Sophia Gomez, Visha Fani, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. It's really good to have you here. You've raced and won some of the hardest gravel courses on Earth. And I think we should start with the Craigslist story. Tell me the day you got a bike on Craigslist and how you got into it.

1:18Sofía Gómez Villafañe:Yeah, so, well, first of all, thanks for having me on. Excited to be on the podcast. Yeah, so I grew up in Argentina and then I moved stateside. My mom's American, so it was a pretty easy transition to move to the U.S. And I have a bajillion siblings, so I'm the fifth of six. And one of my older brothers, he was always super into like outdoor activities, where it was like skiing, kayaking, rock climbing, cycling, anything outdoors he was all about. And he discovered this program that was basically these group of kids from each high school would get together and like train. And then every weekend they would go somewhere and like compete against each other.

1:54Sofía Gómez Villafañe:So it was a way of having cycling as a high school sport, which is not a normal thing. You know, normally it's soccer, lacrosse, you know, swimming, track, football, all those things. So he got my sister to race and I was always going to the races because my parents weren't going to leave me home alone. So, you know, it wasn't necessarily a hair. Are you going to race or not? Because I was like, well, I'm going to these events anyway. So might as well participate. and yeah, my brother found me this bike from Craigslist and, you know, it was super light and it was really cool, but it wasn't anything too fancy.

2:32Sofía Gómez Villafañe:But yeah, that was like my first, my first race bike. How old were you when you actually came to the States? And then how old were you when you got that first bike? When we moved to the States, I was 12. So I got to do middle school and high school. And then I started cycling right when I got into high school. Was that a pretty big transition for you coming from Argentina to the United States? Huge. And I think that transition really like formed me who I am as a person because you, it's not necessarily that you have to grow up so quickly, but you just learn a lot of life lessons. And there's certain things that I kick myself for, you know, I, my understanding of America was everything that I saw in movies, you know, and I thought it was like the mean girls, the popular girls, the jockeys and all that stuff.

3:20Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And it wasn't quite like that. But I also didn't really enjoy having an accent. So I work really, really hard to get rid of it. And now I kind of wish I would have kept it because I think it just adds, I just think it's cool to be different. And to be honest, that was like one of the things that really attracted me to cycling was the fact that it was a sport that not a lot of people did and not a lot of girls did as well. So it kind of just, yeah, it really appealed to me, the idea of this is something different and something that not a lot of people are doing. And yeah, you get to be outdoors all day.

4:00Sophia started competing at an elite level when she was just a teenager. And her early success sparked a dream of turning the sport into a career. By her junior year in high school, she was already racing in the Mountain Bike World Cup.

4:16Sofía Gómez Villafañe:I went to go race a World Cup, which happened to be on the East Coast of the U.S., and I finished dead last. And I was like, oh man, maybe I'm not cut out to do this as a job. Like, I am not that good. After that race, Sophia put her professional cycling dreams on hold and focused on school. She enrolled at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, where she studied exercise science and led the school's bike team. In her spare time, she participated in local cyclocross races. That's where she met her coach, Carmen, who helped her rekindle her dream of going pro. Within cycling, there's all these different disciplines.

4:57Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And then there's this one called cyclocross that it's done in the late fall, early winter to late winter, I would say. And it's a really small circuit and you do a bunch of laps and your race is no longer than like 45 minutes, 10 hour. and this woman Carmen Small who lived in Durango where I was going to school she was a professional road racer she won a world championship title in team time trial and then I think one year she got a bronze medal at the individual time trial so super badass lady and she would jump into these cross races just for fun and to train and I would get to race her and anytime it was a technical course or there was mud, I would beat her pretty good.

5:42Sofía Gómez Villafañe:But then if it was a fast fitness race, then she would beat me. So we kind of had this like kind of rivalry going on. And one day she just approached me and she was like, Hey, like who's coaching you? And I was like, Oh, I'm not being coached by anybody. Like I'm going to school full time. I, you know, I'm financially independent. So I have like a 20 hour a week job that I have to do. And if I'm paying a coach, you know, a hundred to$300 a month, that's more hours I have to work. And those are the hours that I currently have to ride my bike. So she was like, well, she's like, I'd be interested in just coaching you for free.

6:19Sofía Gómez Villafañe:Like I had so many people through my career helped me out. And I think, you know, you're talented. So like, let's talk about it. And I was like, she wants to coach me. So I stopped beating her at these races, you know? And then, you know, another race week goes by and she like nudges me again. And she's like, come over for coffee. Like, let's just come over, sit down. Let's like have a conversation. So I went over to her house and, you know, she kind of sat me down. And that's when she was like, I think you have all the talent to go to the Olympics. You just have to train because you're not really training.

6:53Sofía Gómez Villafañe:Like all your results that you have are running on pure talent. So I was like, sure, I'll give it a try. And yeah, that fall I won collegiate, uh, cyclocross nationals. And then I got second in the U23 race, went to the world championships. And I was like, oh, let's keep this going for like the spring season and see how it goes. And, you know, every year we just kept working together. And, you know, by now she's like one of my best friends. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding recently. And yeah, it's kind of crazy to just have somebody see talent and be willing to invest their time into like seeing that person succeed.

7:37Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And, you know, to this day, I kind of, I, there's a lot of people that got me to ride a bike and help me in the early stages, but she's the one that created me into the cyclist that I am today.

7:52Under Carmen's guidance, Sofia qualified for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where she represented Argentina and cross-country mountain biking. But despite competing on the world's biggest stage, she found the experience less fulfilling than she'd expected. And afterward, she felt ready for a new challenge. The following year, Sofia discovered gravel racing, a discipline that was a perfect mix of strength, agility and endurance. Gravel races can stretch anywhere from 50 to 200 miles, often lasting over 10 hours. They usually take place in the countryside, jumping between paved dirt and gravel roads. In her very first season of the sport, Sophia won Unbound, the premier race in gravel cycling.

8:39Sofía Gómez Villafañe:2022, I won Unbound for the first time. First time doing the event to win it was like a pretty big statement. And, you know, I had gone from racing 90-minute races to now I won a race in like 10 and a half hours, those 200 miles. Finishing in the top 10 at Unbound can be a career-defining moment. The fact that she won on her first attempt put Sophia on the map, and it drew a lot of attention from the cycling industry. Since then, Sophia has also won three first place titles at the Lifetime Grand Prix, a prestigious series that spans both mountain and gravel cycling. What did you learn about yourself like over the course of this big career in cycling?

9:26Sofía Gómez Villafañe:That's a good question. um I think I think what I've learned about myself is I put my full trust in the people that I choose to be part of my team so where that's my cycling coach my strength coach nutritionist whatever it is like I I never think I'm the smartest person in the room I like to surround myself with people that are smarter than me and you know when they're telling me okay you should try this you should try that I am willing to try it and see if I like it or not rather than just make the assumption of like oh no that's not for me like I'm just willing to trust that my coach knows what's best and if she tells me today I'm taking it off I'm taking it off and if she tells me today I'm riding four hours I will ride four hours I won't ride five you know that's amazing you are a good listener I'm not I was never that good of a listener if like someone told you to ride only four hours I would ride five or three yeah and I think like in our um especially in our little bubble of cycling there's this trend of doing more you know like obviously we're I'm doing our biggest race of the year is I'm bound 200 200 mile race in Emporia Kansas and it takes us 10 and a half plus hours it could be up to like 12 if it's a muddy year and a lot of the girls are going out and training eight, nine, 10 hours, you know, on the bike a day.

10:48Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And I, my longest ride is six hours, you know, I'll race for longer, but I don't train more than six hours. But yeah, I just, I don't care to compare my training with what other people are doing because each athlete is so different and we're so individual that what works for me isn't going to necessarily work for you. So. Well, that's interesting. I mean, there is a big theory that you're training less but harder will help you win longer races. I mean, you've won Unbound Gravel, which is the 200-mile race, which probably took you, what, 10 hours or? 10 and a half that year. 10 and a half. So how does that work?

11:24I think, you know, with my coach, we have this theory that you need to be able to train

11:31Sofía Gómez Villafañe:half of the time that you're racist. So like if you're doing a 12-hour day, like for your peak race, as long as you can sustain half of that and you do six hours in training, like you're good, you know, for a single session, but we just don't care to match the training hour to the race hour. Cycling is one of the hardest sports in the world. You have to be so fit and precise, so disciplined. It's also like, it takes you places. You get to see cool things. Is there a place where you just love riding because the landscape is so stunning? trying to figure out how to answer that question because I don't I don't say I ride my bike I train on my bike like it's very rare that I have these epic adventures just go ride your bike like the majority of my time on the bike is very specifically focused on achieving something that being said my sister got married last year in Argentina and we flew down and kind of extended our time there to do a bit of a training camp and it was in my hometown and I got to discover the place that I grew up in through the means of the way that I live my life now.

12:48Sofía Gómez Villafañe:So it was really cool to go back to my hometown and ride all of these roads and go to these lakes and kind of experience the place that I grew up that I have so many memories that weren't of the bike and kind of get to connect them now of like, oh, that epic mountain that we used to go up to go ski, like I can now ride my bike to the top of that hill or I can do this really big loop that used to be like a pretty big adventure when I would go, you know, in the car with my dad to go fish at a certain spot. So that was probably the best, most unique experience I've had of just, yeah, kind of getting to go back to the place that shaped me into the person that I am today and experience it through cycling.

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14:41off. When gravel cyclist Sophia Gomez Vichafanie lines up for a race, she's preparing to cover hundreds of miles over dusty roads and rocky trails. These events can be hot, muddy, and physically punishing with long mountain climbs and fast technical descents. But Sophia thrives in those conditions. They're part of what she loves about the sport. She's more concerned with the big picture of how these races are structured. Because her husband is also a professional gravel cyclist, Sophia has had a front row seat to the disparities in how men and women are treated in the sport.

15:23You've been really outspoken about separating men's and women's races. Why does that matter to you?

15:29Sofía Gómez Villafañe:I think the biggest reason why I was the loudest voice in advocating for separate starts for men and women is because at the end of the day, I would do a race and I would come home and talk to my now husband about his race. And we were in the same race, yet the The way that our races unfolded were completely different. For many years, men and women started these races together in massive packs. As the miles wore on and the terrain grew tougher, the pack would splinter into smaller groups known as selections. A selection is like, let's say there's 100 of you, and then you go up this five-minute climb.

16:09Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And obviously some people are faster, some people are slower. and then the group kind of tends to break into two, three, four, whatever groups. Selections matter because of a technique called drafting. When you're racing behind someone, they block the wind, allowing you to conserve a significant amount of energy. Because men generally ride at faster speeds, a woman who can draft behind the right group of male riders can gain an advantage over her competitors.

16:40Sofía Gómez Villafañe:I just wanted to have fair racing with the women and I wanted it to be like no I won this race because I was the strongest female and not because I got lucky on making this group of men and then they kind of towed me around for another hundred miles or whatnot and I also really understand a lot of the the business side of the sport and you know a lot of the women were struggling to get coverage because when you're starting in the mass pack, you know, first through 10th place women could really be separated by like 20 or 30 minutes because we're making all these selections with the men where, you know, the men's racing the top 20, 30 are a lot closer together.

17:22Sofía Gómez Villafañe:So, you know, as a sponsor, why would I sponsor 10th place in the women when I'm not going to get much coverage when I can sponsor 10th place in the men and actually get some visibility? So I think it was just having such a clear view of the inequality from race experience to earning potential, really. That makes sense. Is that changing or is it? Yeah, it definitely has changed. Like the big series that we do in the US called the Lifetime Grand Prix, all of those events, women have their own start. And then they also implemented drafting rules, which was part two of my advocacy. So I'm like, okay, you give a separate start.

18:02Sofía Gómez Villafañe:But once we start to get mingled with really fast amateurs or slower pro men, we're back to the same thing. So, um, they introduced that this year and they had a lot of success with it and not, you know, their biggest thing was like, how do we enforce this? And they were always thinking, okay, worst case scenario. Um, but they actually never really had any problems with, um, people from different groups drafting each other. So it kept the racing super nice and fair. Um, Um, but yeah, it's been, it's been crazy. Like at first, you know, there's since my very first gravel race, I really advocated for separate starts, no drafting rules.

18:40Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And a lot of the girls that were already racing, they were like, no, like it's the ethos of the event is you have to keep it together. And a year or two go by and, you know, those same women that wanted to keep it together were like, just as, you know, as vocal as I was about needing to have a separate race because they finally understood just how unequal our experience is to that of the pro men. And some of those girls went too far to say, like, I'm not racing a race unless we have a separate start. So it's been cool to see all the things that I thought would be really crucial get introduced and just be so successful.

19:21What made Sophia's advocacy notable was that it didn't necessarily benefit her personally. She thrives in fast, aggressive racing, and she can often hold her own alongside male competitors. But Sophia understood that for women's gravel racing to grow, both as a sport and in sponsorship opportunities, the athletes needed the chance to compete on their own terms. Taking a stand meant pushing back against the status quo, and at times, risking unpopularity. It's a different kind of battle, but one that uses the same mental toughness she's developed throughout her athletic career.

20:04What's your mentality when things get hard or aren't going well?

20:08Sofía Gómez Villafañe:Yeah, I'm lucky enough that I don't get to have that many bad days on the bike. Like, I don't know how my coach has quite sorted that out for me. But yeah, I mean, there's certain days that you have high hopes for a performance and maybe the body isn't there. And that's when I turn to like, well, let's let's do the best that I can on today. And maybe it's not going for the win. And it's, you know, let's be more conservative and like try to salvage a fifth place or a sixth place or, you know, whatever the best will be on that day. But then I also often need to remind myself that, like, if I am suffering, everybody else is suffering.

20:43Sofía Gómez Villafañe:And I don't think I often give myself the credit of just how good of an athlete I am. and I just think everybody else is better than me even though my resume says otherwise. Like I definitely don't race with the confidence that I probably should all the time having the resume that I do but I also am the type of individual that always thrives in that underdog mentality. Yeah I don't know I just I'm a very honest person and I always I have such a good relationship with my coach. You know, she's my coach and I joke that she's also part-time therapist just because we have such a good relationship and I can really open up and kind of tell her on the things that I'm going through my head.

21:24Sofía Gómez Villafañe:That being said, I've gone through like not having the best public image on social just because I was part of this series that they kind of made me the villain and I've been working really hard to like show people the true Sophia of like, yeah, I am a cutthroat racer when I'm within the tape, but that is a very different Sophia. Like that is the Sophia that's doing her job, fulfilling what she needs to to her sponsors. And it's not the same as off the bike Sophia. How do you deal with that? Like the athletes 20 years ago didn't have to deal with social media. They just could be athletes. Now you have to be like all these things.

22:03Yes. And as a woman who's trying to win, like you're doing everything you can to win. And sometimes that perception isn't like, I don't know, it's kind of a double standard. It's kind of lame.

22:15Sofía Gómez Villafañe:Oh, without a doubt. You know, and I think, again, going back to me really seeing the inequality between my husband and I, like for all the things that he's praised for, I do the same and I'm criticized. So it's like he works really hard and I don't know how to have fun or, you know, I take it too serious. So it definitely gets me all fired up because I'm like, well, this is not fair, you know, And I think, you know, you don't often get female personalities that are strong. And, you know, I've been a very confident person. And confidence in women is, you know, there's a very fine line between that is a confident woman and perceived as like that is a beep woman.

23:02Sofía Gómez Villafañe:Yeah. Yeah. You know? So, yeah, I've definitely felt the double standard a lot. And, you know, now I've done things like you just you can limit who can comment on your social. So that's like one of the most recent things I did. I've like limited that. So it's like if you want to go and bully me on social media, at least follow me and you have to wait a week. So, yeah. So, yeah, social media can be really fulfilling in a lot of ways, but it can also crush a lot of people.

23:36Balancing criticism and double standards while showing up to race at the highest level isn't easy. But Sophia refuses to let any of it dull her ambition or shake her confidence.