film set, famously used in Spaghetti Western films starring the legendary Clint Eastwood? Well that’s exactly what happens if you enter The Bandit gravel race. Jorge Padrones donned his poncho and his spurs and headed along to join in the fun.
It is perhaps not common knowledge that some of the famous Hollywood western movies starring Clint Eastwood were shot in Spain. In particular, the Sad Hill cemetery is located in the hearth of Castilla in Santo Domingo de Silos, which is also known as is the place where the Spanish language was born.
Image courtesy of @Cano Fotosports
This false cemetery was built by the Spanish Army for the film and features over 5000 ‘graves’. In the past few years, it has been refurbished and now shows all the graves in good condition. Taking advantage of this, a local cycling club organised “The Bandit” gravel race which this year also doubled-up as the Spanish National gravel championships.
Image courtesy of @Cano Fotosports
The Santo Domingo de Silos area has a lot to offer to the riders, history, curiosities and also very good and very varied gravel terrain. On the menu for the race, we had 137 km with a total of 2500 climbing meters.
Image courtesy of @Cano Fotosports
It is one of the most varied and fun courses I remember as the change of terrain and topology was constant, we never were on the same path for more than 5 km and we had from some tarmac local roads, good gravel tracks, some technical tracks, nice and flowy singletrack and some more technical singletrack. Chatting the previous day to Sergio Mantecon, he summarised the course by saying everybody will have a terrain to shine, the rouleurs, the climbers, the technical riders, all will have their favourite terrain for a while and on the other hand will have a terrain where they will suffer making it more equal for the riders regardless of their skills.
The main sight on the course was passing through the Sad Hill cemetery, which we passed through twice, the local people said on the first pass you dig the grave and on the last one you use it as after almost 140 kms of exhausting gravel riding you would be almost dead.
Image courtesy of @Cano Fotosports
Sofia Rodriguez and Jose Manuel Diaz were the winners of the elite category at the National Championship, but a lot of cyclists from the whole country were also fighting for their respective categories, like me, or just enjoying a nice and sunny gravel morning on an incredible landscape.
This was the second edition of this bandit Gravel which is consolidating as a gravel classic on the Spanish calendar and comes with the endorsement of his elder sister “Colina Triste” (Sad Hill in Spanish) a four-day UCI MTB race, organised by the same crew.