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Sofia Gomez Villafane and Keegan Swenson won the 122-mile ‘waffle distance’ of the inaugural Belgian Waffle Ride Arizona on March 5, 2023. The field for the women came down to three riders at the front of the race until Villafane hit the gas with 40 miles to go to earn a solo win ahead of Anna Yamauchi and Alexis Skarda. Swenson, who won BWR Utah in 2020, countered a blistering attack by Christopher Blevins in the final two miles to secure his victory.
“It was a good one. It was a pretty epic last 10 miles,” Swenson said about the one-on-one battle with Blevins. “We pretty much attacked those last climbs, in the neighborhood, I brought him back, it was a lot of cat and mouse. An awesome day.”
BWR Arizona, the “hell of the north desert’ with a start and finish in Cave Creek, is the first of seven events this season and opens the series for the 2023 Quadrupel Crown of Gravel, offering an overall prize purse of $25,000 shared among the top five Waffle men and women. The Quadrupel Crown will be contested in a points-based omnium format with San Diego in April and Kansas in October being mandatory. Riders competing for the Quadrupel honours and prize purse will be scored based on the total points of their top four (Quad) races.
The opening event covered 122 miles of terrain from the Tonto Forest mountains and washes to single-track in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, pushing riders’ limits with
8,400 feet of elevation gain on a fully-marked course with traffic control and stocked aid stations. Fifty percent of the course was pavement which was used to…
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