Last year, Nathan Haas had a special green and gold paint cornago to match the Australian jersey in the first round of the uci Gravel World Championship. After the race, it then went straight to the museum, never rode again...Or at least that's what Haas thought at the time.

It now boomerangs to riders after this year's multi-colored model, in which the pink tones lost in transit on the way to Sunday's 169km Italian race turned blue.

"The gravel world almost never happened for me. The bike was lost somewhere in the airport, but we still can't find it," Haas and the Instagram story said. "Last minute SOS to my Colnago family for help."

The result of that SOS was that instead of celebrating Tadej Pogañar's victory in Il Lombardia, members of the Colnago team made a quick dash to the museum to get last year's bike. In the meantime, Haas got many items that were missing from his supplies as well, including new tires, bidons and kits, as they were crammed into a lost bike.

The former professional road Rider became Gravel Private Ar in 2022 and has since focused on a combination of US standouts such as the UCI Gravel World Series, Europe's Top Gravel Events and Unbound. He has only been out of the top 7 spots in this year's UCI qualifying series once and was 4th in Traka200 on May 2.

He was also Australia's top finisher at last year's Gravel World Championships and ranked 16th on the course where many actually chose to ride road bikes.Still, 2023 is a more technical route to distort equipment choices, even though paved and unpaved roads are nearly 50/50 split. We offer a wide range of services to meet the needs of our clients. The course includes several challenging large gravel sections, a number of technical descents and challenging steep climbs and 1900m of elevation gain.

This field contains many top gravel names, including Keegan Swenson, the discipline's US powerhouse, along with defending champion Gianni Vermeersch (Belgium) and his compatriot Wout van Aert. Haas is again likely to be Australia's top contender in the Elite Men's race, and his position on the start list indicates he could be in the 2nd row of the start grid.

"I've only ridden this bike 2 times, 1 time in training and 1 time in the world last year," Haas said. "I think the soul of this bike was destined to ride again at the World Championships, so let's do this."