LAGUNA SECA >> Keegan Swenson had an adventurous sporting youth. He played soccer, rode lightweight motorcycles in the dirt and raced on snow skis. But pedaling fat-tired bicycles on high-altitude mountain trails in Utah eventually took precedence. National junior and senior mountain bike and downhill titles and victories in unheralded international niche events arrived quickly. With the same swiftness, Swenson seized an opportunity four years ago to compete in a new off-road racing series. Life Time, Inc., the international fitness and event company based in Boulder, Colorado, purchased the Sea Otter Classic from co-founder Frank Yohannan in late 2021. The following April, an off-road grand prix series, including mountain biking and gravity racing for men and women, was introduced with the cycling festival’s new owners as title sponsor. It also offered prize money, an increasing rarity in domestic professional cycling events.

It will be one of the featured events at this weekend’s Sea Otter Classic at Laguna Seca. The cycling festival will also present its annual combination of youth and adult cycling, beginners to professionals, road racing to downhill, single speed to e-bike divisions.

The schedule begins at 7:15 a.m. Thursday with a circuit race and ends Sunday with the Downhill Expert finals. Hundreds of merchandise exhibitors, athlete appearances, music, food vendors, equipment demonstrations and test rides will occur daily. The race schedule, spectator admission options, athlete entry fees and parking details are available on the event’s website, www.seaotterclassic.com.

The prestige event

Swenson, 31, of Heber City, Utah, has traveled the world via competitive cycling. But the new series allowed riders to primarily compete domestically and earn a living. Swenson won four of the seven races last year, 12 of 21 events held to date and all season titles in the circuit’s three-year tenure.

“You have to be physically fit, but mentally you have to know how to race and how to race individual races because all events race differently,” said Swenson during on pre-event video press conference. “You have to really analyze the course and know who’s racing and who’s targeting what event.”

“There are so many factors that go into winning these races. You have to check all the boxes in order to make it happen. If you just have two of the three, it’s not enough now because everyone is so good. You have to make sure you’re crossing all t’s and dotting all the I’s.”

With a new format and smaller elite fields, Swenson will be favored again Thursday on the opening day of the Sea Otter Classic at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and on nearby trails and roads.

A field of 25 men and 25 women (10 fewer than last year) will compete in the prestige event of the annually evolving four-day festival of most things cycling.

The men will begin the three-lap, 88.8-mile race at 10:30 a.m., women 20 minutes later in the season opener.

Matthew Beers of South Africa and Payson McKelveen of Durango, Colorado, who finished second and third overall last season, will be among the men’s field.

“I think the new course will be really fun, said Beers, who rode with Swenson in the multi-day Cape Epic in South Africa last month. “As the course is quite short, the racing will be full gas from the start but I think my preparation will mean I’m set up well for a hard day out there.”

The women’s race

Sofia Gomez Villafane of Argentina, Swenson’s wife, is favored in the women’s race as the defending titlist. Melisa Rollins of Salt Lake City and Paige Onweller of Bella Vista, Ark., who placed second and third in the series last year, will all also compete.

“My preparation for this season hasn’t been the best so far as I broke both of my wrists racing in Australia last month,” said Rollins. “I haven’t dealt with this type of setback before, so it has been one of the biggest challenges as an athlete. I’ve made some set-up changes and have been able to continue to train, so I feel ready to start the season.”

Gravel racing courses greatly vary in length and can be held on long, flat gravel roads, single and double track terrain and on rutted climbs and descents. Sometimes stretches of paved roads connect the off-road segments. Cycling’s international governing body (UCI) sanctioned the inaugural Gravel World Championship in 2022.

Participants use thin-tire road bikes, hybrids and mountain bike and specialty designs with wider tires and dropped handlebars.

While previously held on the same course, on the same day and in the mix of mountain bike races, the elite gravity events will held on a new course, with additional opened sections of Fort Ord and without other athletes on the course.

“A lot the stuff (land) in Fort Ord is constantly under development and they are clearing the mines and whatnot that have been out there,” said Kimo Seymour, President of Life Time Events. “It opens up more terrain for us every year.

“This year, we were able to piece together enough of a course to use some of the elements we’ve used in the past couple of years from the mountain bike race but predominantly get all gravel. We used Barloy Canyon Road for part of the road race. There’s such a lack of maintenance. It’s a paved road, but it’s practically gravel. It’s so rough and it’s in such bad shape so we thought we thought, ‘Let’s mix it a little bit of that as well.’ “