3-time Leadville 100 champion rides to victory in men’s Ram’s Horn Escape race at Bighorn Gravel

Eric Brunner and Dylan Johnson placed second and third, as Middaugh and Dorf paced local cyclists

NewsNews | Jun 26, 2023

Ryan Sederquist Follow

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**Mack Dorf, center, leads the Bighorn Gravel field out of Gypsum on Sunday morning. Howard Grotts (far left in red jersey) won the race.**
*Linda Guerrette/Courtesy photo*

Howard Grotts was the class of the men’s field at the second annual Bighorn Gravel event in Gypsum on Sunday, winning the 77-mile Ram’s Horn Escape in 4 hours and 26 minutes flat, two minutes ahead of runner-up Eric Brunner. Youtube celebrity cyclist Dylan Johnson (4:31.23) rounded out the podium. As soon as the peloton hit Red Hill road, Grotts let the peloton know what they were in for.

“I definitely wanted to make the race hard more or less from the start,” he said, adding that he hoped to not spend too much time alone.

By the top of the first climb, five riders in the 137-athlete field remained in front: Grotts, Brunner, Scott Funston, Brendan Johnston, and hometown hero Mack Dorf. After the swift paved descent, each took turns blocking the wind up Gypsum Creek Road.

“Really early on, it was hard,” Brunner said regarding the initial pace. “We rode hard on the second climb as well.”

Jetting up the 2.9% gradient at roughly 16.6 miles per hour for almost 10 miles, Dorf knew his pace from the gun wasn’t sustainable, and eventually, he wasn’t able to cycle through for a pull at the front.

Howard Grotts pushes the pace in the first five miles of Sunday’s race.

“Halfway up Gypsum Creek, I was starting to hurt pretty bad,” he said.

“They started getting after me,” he continued with a smile. “You know, ‘you gotta pull, too, dude.'”

Grotts threw down his first real statement when the slope jacked up to 9% in the final mile before aid station one. Only Brunner could respond to Grotts’ sustained, eight-minute, 300 watt outburst. Dorf, tried to go with for a moment, but figured he’d better pull back to prevent a bigger lactic acid catastrophe.

“I wouldn’t call it a bonk, but it was a massive effort to hang in there,” Dorf described. The pacing plan paid off.

“My middle third of the race, I let a lot of the guys ride away, so I was able to recover,” the 19-year-old said. “By the time we hit that last third and turned up Hardscrabble, I was feeling good again.” Dorf would finish in 4:53:43, good for 11th.

Grotts and Brunner were neck-and-neck up to Fulford and back, careening around East Brush Creek Road’s smooth gravel at speeds approaching 39 mph. Meanwhile, Johnson, who arrived at Fulford — mile 46 — five minutes after Grotts, risked even more, topping out at a breathtaking 41.1 mph. It wasn’t until making the hard left turn up Abrams Gulch where Grotts finally put things away.

“I didn’t know how he was feeling, but I wasn’t really feeling it there myself,” said Brunner, who led the 2022 Bighorn event before a flat tire ultimately dropped him to a fourth-place finish. This year, riding 40 mm wheels, he decided to secure second.

“I was just trying to hold onto his wheel. About halfway up Abrams, when we got close to the steep section, I just knew I didn’t have it and saved it a little bit so I didn’t crawl up that too slowly,” he said. “I thought I’d hang on for second.”

“It was hard to know how the race would play out at the end. I could tell Eric was struggling a little before the steep part of Abrams, but didn’t know how much time I would gain there,” Grotts stated later.

“My body was definitely feeling the efforts leading up to that point – all those bumps on the gravel bike add up – but I just tried to stay smooth and carry momentum. Once I was on the pavement and couldn’t see Eric I knew the win was more or less secure.”

Eric Brunner, who was fourth in the 2022 Bighorn Gravel event, took second place after battling most of 60 miles with eventual winner Howard Grotts.

A Life Time Grand Prix contestant, Brunner is priming for the third event in the series, the Crusher in the Tushar on July 8. Before then, the Boulder-area cyclist is planning to line up for the FireCracker 50 in Breckenridge.

“This was like the perfect preparation for that,” he said. “Did (Bighorn Gravel) last year, had a great time,” he continued before being reminded of his mechanical near the Peter Estin Hut.

“Yeah, so better luck for me this year!” he laughed. “That was definitely a good feeling to come back and have a clean race. I would love to make it to the top step. I mean, in any race but particularly this one.”

Third-place finisher Dylan Johnson used a drop-bar hard-tail bike during the 77-mile Ramshorn Escape.

Johnson was pleased with third having only spent three days at altitude.

“Paced myself appropriately, which of course meant I was off the back on the first climb, but it payed off because I managed not to blow up like so many others,” he stated afterward. He was proud of his drop-bar hardtail steed. “It was the perfect bike for the course.”

Even though it would classify as a shorter Life Time Grand Prix event, Brunner said that if Bighorn Gravel was a part of the series, it would be the most technically demanding.

“Especially given that it’s a gravel race — it kind of straddles that middle.”

Grotts said the event provided “an incredible challenge against gravity and the thin air, with plenty of technical terrain to keep it interesting.”

“It’s great to see local races alive and well in Colorado and, for me, to explore some new roads and trails,” he said.

Reigning bronze medalist Josiah Middaugh (4:46:21) finished eighth as the top local rider. Just behind Dorf was Eagle’s Sam Brown (4:54:47). The pair traded haymakers for a while late in the race. Dorf felt prepared having raced five gravel races in Spain and Germany this spring wearing the Girona Racing Academy (GRA) kit.

Josiah Middaugh was the top local finisher in the men’s Ramshorn Escape on Sunday, placing eighth.

“I think it suits me well,” the 2022 VMS graduate and in-coming University of Virginia student-athlete said of off-road racing, adding that he thinks he still enjoys — and might be better at — road.

“But fitness translates no matter what,” he continued. “If you’re strong in road or gravel, you’re going to be strong in the other discipline.”

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Last week, Dorf competed in his first U23 USA Cycling road nationals in Roanoke, Virginia. In day one’s road race, he was in the lead group with one lap remaining when his dad, Erik, tried to hand him an ice sock. It bounced into the rear cassette, which splayed into a thousand pieces. By the time neutral support swapped out his rear wheel, Mack was out of contention. Naturally, Dad was pretty bummed.

“I’ve relived that moment a thousand times since it happened,” Erik said. “He put so much effort and work into it — nothing like punching him in the mouth. That was a royal mistake on my part.”

Mack Dorf climbs up Red Hill road in the early stages of Sunday’s Bighorn Gravel event.

His son redeemed himself with a sixth-place criterium showing the following day. Though his GRA days are over — he’ll be racing with UVA’s club team next year, striving to eventually garner a U.S. club’s attention with his resume — he’s grateful for immersing himself in one of cycling’s hotbeds.

“It was a great program,” he said. In the same way he rubbed shoulders with Belgium’s big boys, he was satisfied having put himself in the thick of Sunday’s race, too.

“I’m happy with how I raced. Obviously, I would have been happier if I could have stayed with those guys for the whole race,” he said.

“I made that split that other guys didn’t make, and ultimately, some of those other guys that paced the race a bit better did end up beating me, but I’m happy that I went out there and tried to win it — give it my all.”

As far as the father-son battle was concerned, Erik, who is shooting for a win in the Steamboat Gravel 100-mile event later this summer, said it was pretty much settled at the start.

“I have no chance to keep up with Mack, and I’m fully aware of my limitations. … As soon as the neutral support vehicle drove away,” he concluded before a brief pause and glance at his son.

“It was over.”