COLLINGWOOD — A childhood racing the local ski hills and careening down the Pretty River Valley on a mountain bike led Devon Clarke to the top of the podium again as Canada's elite gravel cycling champion.
Clarke is back home in Collingwood, working and training in her cycling studio at Chalk's Training, after winning the 2025 Ghost of the Gravel race on June 15 in Water Valley, Alta., which doubled as this year's Canadian Gravel Championships. Clarke is the elite women's winner for this year.
The 118-kilometre course north of Calgary delivered a solid challenge for the elite racers, but Clarke, who is also the 2023 Canadian gravel champion, knew she could stay at the front of the pack.
"It was in a pretty hilly area, and it was, luckily a nice day," said Clarke.
Hilly might be an understatement, as the race included 6,800 feet of elevation gain in the Alberta foothills.
"Eventually it was three of us racing (at the front) and I had a bit of a panic, because my chain fell off," recalled Clarke.
She lost three minutes fixing her bike chain before chasing down her competitors with only 15 kilometres left of the course.
"In the last 500 metres I was able to pull away ... and take the lead by 20 seconds," said Clarke.
She finished the course with a time of three hours 58 minutes and 49 seconds.
Her first-place finish gives her a spot in the UCI Gravel World Championships in Netherlands in October.
Clarke was a ski racer as a kid, and dabbled in mountain biking for fun. Bicycle races, however, didn't appeal to her younger self.
"When I was like 18 and a ski racer, I went to a cycling camp where we'd bike like 100 kilometres a day and, after that, I said I would never ride a bike again, because I was scarred," she said. "It's funny."
But the 31-year-old discovered a passion for competitive cycling about four years ago, first as a road racer and soon after racing on gravel courses.
"You can ride anywhere, and that was super appealing to me," said Clarke, who still competes in both road and gravel races.
She won the 2023 provincial road champion title, the same year as her last national gravel championship.
Diving into the road and gravel racing world also inspired Clarke's career path.
She married Chad Warren, the owner and a trainer at Chalk's Training, and the two agreed in 2024 a cycling studio would make a good addition to the private and semi-private training services offered at Chalk's.
Clarke now works full-time as a trainer at Chalk's and also does her own training at the studio with help from her husband.
"I love training for things, and I love the competition," said Clarke. "It's just fun being able to be competitive in a sport now, and cycling is one of the few sports you can actually be competitive in as a 30-something-year-old."
In addition to Clarke's win on Sunday, Collingwood teen William McFarlane finished second in the U17 men's category at the Ghost of the Gravel race, cycling 67.5 kilometres in two hours. McFarlane was racing as part of the Stimulus Trek team.