If you blinked, you would have missed it. Only one second separated the top four junior riders in Sunday’s SBT GRVL amateur race. 

The 79.3 mile race on the Black Course began from Dry Creek Park in Hayden, taking racers around Routt County’s rural roads and back where they started. 

The top junior gravel riders across the country traveled in for this weekend’s events, with Carter Lembke taking home the ultimate prize. 

Lembke said he fell behind the leading pack on the final ascent, catching back up to the group on a small downhill section. It all came down to the final turn. 

“I managed to sneak around everyone else before the last corner,” Lembke said. “The finish straight is so short that once you get into the last corner, the race is kind of done from there.” 

Lembke pedaled hard through the finish line, edging out the three riders on his tail by a wheel’s length. He crossed the finish line in 3 hours, 35 minutes, 45 seconds. Spencer Coy, second place, was just milliseconds behind. 

Lembke, a 17 year old from Columbia, Missouri, said gravel riding is entirely different where he’s from. Sunday’s race took things to a whole new level for him. 

“I’ve never ridden a gravel bike in the mountains,” he explained. “It was pretty scary honestly. The first descent we went down, I looked down and we were going 45 (miles per hour) around a gravel turn. We don’t have that where I’m from. It was really fun, you just hold on for dear life.” 

It didn’t take long for Lembke to get the hang of things, however. He pushed hard on uphills, knowing he would have time to rest his legs on the downhill sections. The amateur race saw a total elevation gain of 5,568 feet — something foreign to Lembke and many of the other junior riders. 

“The descents are super long so you can recover on those,” he said. “It’s completely different racing than what I’m used to, so it was pretty fun. The last descent went all the way to the finish and you were going 50 (miles per hour) the whole way down.”

This year, USA Cycling created a junior championship series with five races across the country — Texas; California; Kansas; Colorado and the national championships in Minnesota. SBT GRVL organizers had a concentrated effort to boost junior participation this year, making it the perfect place to act as one of those junior races. 

According to Lembke, the winner of the junior series gets an invite to the Road National Camp in Colorado Springs which is the next step up the ladder toward the professional racing scene. 

Lembke won the Texas race earlier this year but was unable to make it to California and Kansas, so he needed to race at SBT GRVL to stay toward the top of the junior leaderboard. He’s currently tied with Ethan Shirey, Sunday’s fifth-place finisher, for the lead. 

The series will come down to the national championship race in September. Lembke said he is excited to test his skills at nationals, and ride harder than ever. 

“The whole goal is to come out here and suffer as much as you can,” he said. “There’s only so much prep you can do.” 

Sunday’s action did not end with the amateur race as 70 of the world’s best professional gravel riders competed on the same course, except they had to take on three laps amassing 116.9 miles. 

This year’s pro champion was Brennan Wertz of Mill Valley, California, crossing the finish in 4:56:19. Wertz dethrones Utah’s Keegan Swenson who had won each of the previous three SBT GRVL pro races. Swenson finished in second, just seven seconds off the lead. 

Melisa Rollins of Alpine, Utah, took the top spot for the pro women, crossing the finish line in 5:36:55. 

For the full results from Saturday’s recreational rides or Sunday’s races, visit Athlinks.com/event/300676/results/Event/1114906/Results.