Ted King’s Father’s Day Win
Ted King isn’t just a world-class racer, but he’s also a father of two wonderful children. Racing, training, parenting and being a partner in UnTapped Maple can seem like quite the balancing act, but Ted (and Laura) do an amazing job. Here is Ted’s report from Father’s Day 2026.
Father’s Day weekend was spend in the Ottawa Gatineau region of Canada, only a four-hour drive from home in Vermont. This is an area that’s known for its outdoor recreation—and its ability to churn out athletes—so it was no surprise to see how busy the start village was, even though we arrived more than 90 minutes before the race began. The race is the OG Classique, a first-year event and UCI qualifier for the gravel world championships. My wife, Laura, was racing, too. We had a good friend along for the weekend, to watch the kids during the actual competition.
This was a bit of an existential weekend for me, as it was the first time I signed up for the age group race. I made this decision seeing my friend and colleague, Nicolas Roche, someone who has worn the leaders jersey in a grand tour, having won the age group world championships ahead of Philippe Jilbert and other retired former World Tour professionals at the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships. Meanwhile, I take a peek at the elite results from the UCI worlds, and they read like a results sheet from a current World Tour semi-classic. As a 43-year-old parent juggling training, owning a business, and practicing the art of the modern privateer, I wanted to punch my ticket for a chance to race at the UCI Gravel World Championships in Australia this October.
With a busy life, bike setup has to fit in between other duties. I’d never ridden in this particular region, but figured it was going to be similar to Vermont’s gravel. That guess was spot on: It felt like I was riding right out of my front door! Beautiful rolling hills. The uphills were punchy and steep, but relatively short, with the longest climb around 3 miles, but generally much shorter than that. There has been quite a bit of thunderstorm rain recently, so the ground was tacky and very fast-rolling. Because of that—and the extensive paved sections—I went for Rene Herse Corkscrew Climb semi-slicks in the Endurance casing, set up tubeless with Rene Herse Supple Sealant. On my ‘bigfoot’ XPLR wheels, they inflate to around 46 mm, which resulted in a really confident set of tires.
The format of the race was fascinating—it’s clear that gravel is still finding its footing. The elite men rolled out first. Two minutes later, the elite women followed. Then, two minutes after that, a huge crowd of hard-charging 19-to-60-year-old male racers sprinted off the line. To figure out who is in our category, we had to look for a one-inch colored sticker on our race number, pinned on the back of our jerseys. There was a mix of team racing, tactical eyeing of other racers who were actually in your race—and ultimately what I’d call organized chaos.
After some of those punchy climbs thined out our many-hundred rider field, I responded to someone’s attack on the second-longest climb of the day—and quickly had a gap. Another rider, Sjaan, jumped across to me, and we quickly extended the lead to 10, 20, 30 seconds. Sjaan, a very high-level athlete and former professional triathlete, and I had some fun a decade ago in the early days of New England gravel racing. Earlier in the race, we had caught up and reminisced a bit.
The two of us efficiently plowed our way to the finish, riding through groups of dropped elite racers, finishing with a time of 3:20 hours. I do love UCI races for their approachable race distances. This was 75 miles (120 km), so practically an opener by ultra-race standards!
Sjaan and I rolled in together, another funny characteristic of these races. Because he’s the next age group older than me, we didn’t need to sprint through the narrow, muddy finish chute. We each won our categories, and then we were able to hang with our kids all afternoon!
Laura won her race (also in the 40-44 age group), so there was reason to celebrate for the whole family.
