USA Cycling confirmed 28 athletes on the national team headed to Tábor, Czech Republic for the 2024 UCI Cyclocross World Championships, taking place February 3-4. Five recently-crowned national champions are on the team, with U23 men’s winner Jack Spranger (Bear National Team) declined to participate at Worlds.
Four-time elite women’s champion Clara Honsinger (S&M Racing) and two-time elite men’s champion Eric Brunner (WTP Pivot Off Road) will headline the roster along with U23 women’s winner Lizzy Gunsalus (CCB Racing) and junior champions David Thompson (AG2R Citroën U19 Team) and Vida Lopez de San Roman (Bear National Team).
Lopez de San Roman made history in December as the first US woman to win a junior cyclocross World Cup race, taking a solo victory in Hulst on December 30. On the junior men’s side, Thompson finished second at the first Junior World Cup of the year in Troyes, France while Henry Coote (Comp Edge Racing) claimed his first European podium at the Grand Prix Sven Nys. Thompson is the third-best junior rider in the UCI world CX rankings through mid-January, with Miles Mattern 10th and Coote 11th on the men’s side.
Three elite men and three elite women will be part of Team USA. Curtis White (Steve Tilford Foundation) is the top US elite rider in the UCI CX rankings, placed 28th. WTP Pivot Off Road teammates Scott Funston and Brunner are ranked 35th and 43rd, respectively. Honsinger is ranked 37th among elite women, while she’ll be joined by Steve Tilford Foundation Racing teammates Katie Clouse and Raylyn Nuss.
Both White and Brunner have only accumulated UCI points from racing in North America this season, White winning a pair of C1 events en route to securing the USCX series title, and Brunner winning the Pan-American and US championships. Funston wrapped 10 events in Europe around his bronze-medal finish at US nationals in Louisville, his best finish sixth at a C2 race in Gernelle, France.
Honsinger had her best finish at Worlds in 2021, when she finished fourth in the elite women’s race at Oostende. She has only four starts in Europe since winning the US national crown, with three top 10s this month in Belgium. The trip to Worlds will be the first cyclocross race overseas for Nuss and Clouse this season.
Andrew Strohmeyer, who earned a silver medal in the elite men’s category at US Cyclocross Nationals this year, will compete in the U23 division at Worlds. He is ranked three spots higher than Brunner in the world…
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