A mass start in gravel races can quickly mean that female professional riders will be scattered away from the field of mostly male pros and avid amateurs, and the race can be influenced or ruined by a completely different category of intrigue. 

Last year, Unbound Gravel200 introduced another start time for elite women, but did not continue to divide the field for long, especially as the bottleneck of mud field chaos was only 11 miles. This year, to make a difference, the gap has been widened between professional men and professional women, as well as professional women and the general field of 200-mile races. 

The question is, is it enough to make significant changes to the dynamics of women's race and interference from men?

Unbound200 riders will depart in the early hours of Saturday, with 145 professional men departing at 5:50CDT and 61 professional women departing at 6:05. Rather than a margin of 200 minutes against the more than 1200 riders who make up the remaining 8 fields, that gap will be 25 minutes after 6:30 of the professional women. 

Australian gravel champion Justine Barrow agreed to a separation at the start line. Last year's unbound was the first time she had raced without a mass start.

"Just not chaotic, you know where your competitors are," Barrow told Cycling News. 

"If you are striving, you can compete with women instead of thinking that other women can come back to you by men. But everyone is in the same position (during a mass start).

The big question is how separate start times affect the rest of the race.

The big gap this year is leaving a 15-minute gap to the professional men ahead and a 25-minute gap to the rest of the field behind, so the mix should not happen immediately, but it could still be a matter of when.

"People in Life Time and Unbound are helping us get closer and closer to getting a fair race for women. It's a really tricky element of women's gravel racing. And now we're not there yet, but we're getting closer," said Sarah Sturm, who in 2023 became 3rd in Unbound.

Sturm, who finished in the top 20 of the UCI Gravel World Championships for the past two years, said that even when the women's Elite race was held on a different day than the Elite Men's race, some of the field ended up mixing with the over 50 age groups.

"There are only a handful of races that really are women's races, and Promoters have been able to figure out how to make it another woman's start, another woman's race."

One step that the organizers were considering trying to mitigate the impact of the mixing of the fields was a rule prohibiting drafting between categories, but enforcement for this year's edition

2022Unbound200 champion sofia Gomez Villafañe announced that she would be giving full support for women. I've been advocating for different races and creating rules early rather than later, but I've driven through all the different starting formats. 

"This will be my third unbound, and again, we have to show we really do not know what to expect," she said of the Lifetime Grand Prix anchor event. "In my first unbound, I was trying to predict what that mix start would look like and how the race would line up like it was my first one last year, with the small gap we had on elite men, over amateurs, and when it would start mixing categories.

"This year, with a time buffer added between all the fields, whether the categories are mixed and how things play out"

Carolyn Schiff finished ahead of Villafache last year for the pro Women's Unbound 200 title, but it's not clear if she'll be able to win. Had agreed with her enemies about the formula for a true women's race, especially now the field is so strong.

"I think the only solution to avoid the impact men have on women's races is different day races," Carolin Schiff, winner of the 2023Unbound200, told cyclingnews. 

"The larger time gap is nice, but eventually the fields will be mixed again. At least it's the same for any of us, but our race is always influenced by men."