Gravel Grinder News: 2025 Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame Class Announced

The Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame has announced its class of inductees for 2025. These four individuals were nominated by the public, had their nominations read and voted upon by the electors of the GCHoF which includes past Hall members, and then the results were tabulated and the inductees identified by the GCHoF. 

Following are the official press release announcements for each individual, edited for brevity for this post, and a comment after each from myself giving my own opinion on each inductee. My opinions are my own and definitely do not reflect those of anyone else involved in the matter of choosing this class for the GCHoF

. Note: In the FN&V last week I stated only three would be inducted, but it will be four. I apologize for any inconvenience. Also, all images of the inductees and information on the inductees was provided by the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame.

Amanda Nauman Sheek: 

While Amanda Nauman Sheek may be best known as a professional gravel cyclist, her work to promote the positive aspects of gravel cycling has had a profound and lasting impact. On the bike, Sheek is a two-time DK200/Unbound Gravel champion, and holds the distinction of winning one of the toughest editions of the event –– the infamous “mud year” in 2015. She’s also won or finished on the podium at countless other events, including Mid-South, Unbound XL and Belgian Waffle Ride California, among others.

It should also be noted that Amanda along with her husband started Mammoth Tuff, a gravel event in California and have made that a part of the UCI Gravel World Series this year. 

Comments: Amanda is one of the first women with a Pro/semi-Pro status that crossed over to gravel and made a big impact. Along with fellow GCHoF'er, Rebecca Rusch, these two women put gravel racing at the forefront of women's minds when it came to opportunities to enter competitive cycling as a money-making, or supplementary income sort of vocation.  

Sheek also, more importantly, showed the way to other women that gravel was a good way to have fun, stretch themselves, and be more than they may have thought they could be. A true influencer who made a mark in the sport.  While Sheek is on the GCHoF board, I don't have a problem with this. I believe it shows that Sheek truly cares about gravel cycling.(And I know this to be true from personal experience)

LeLan Dains:

With a gravel resume stretching back to the earliest days of Unbound Gravel’s predecessor, the DK200, LeLan Dains has played a critical leadership role in the sport of gravel cycling. His tireless vision has helped Unbound Gravel grow into the world’s premier gravel event, and his work has been instrumental in putting Kansas gravel on the map as a top travel destination.

LeLan continues to help push gravel cycling/bikepacking forward with his influence on The Great Plains Gravel Route.

Comments: I cannot remember which GCHoF induction ceremony this happened at, but during a conversation I had with LeLan Dains I told him that he belonged in the Hall at some point. He scoffed at the notion, which should tell you a lot about his character. 

But LeLan deserves to be in the GCHoF. LeLan helped push the DK200 into the limelight and to the top of the heap when it came to gravel events worldwide. There are not many that can lay claim to that, although there is one individual that can, which I'll get to later here. 

For that alone, LeLan should be in the Hall, but the Hall itself owes a huge debt of gratitude for its mere existence to LeLan. Truly, without LeLan there probably wouldn't be a GCHoF. Again, not many can approach the influence LeLan has had on gravel cycling since from its beginnings in the Modern Era. There is no question, he definitely deserves this honor.

Ted King:

Widely credited as the first UCI World Tour road cycling competitor to cross over to the gravel cycling discipline, Ted King raised the bar for the professionalism required to win big gravel events. With palmares that include winning Unbound Gravel twice and victories at SBT Gravel, Grinduro, Rasputitsa, Vermont Overland, and UnPAved, among others, King is well-known as a fierce competitor.

Ted continued to influence gravel cycling with his podcast, gravel event promotions, and social media. 

Comments: I was at the finish line when Ted King won the DK200 in 2016. It was apparent then that gravel cycling, in terms of competitiveness and popularity, was going to explode into the next level. Wow! I had no idea it would get where it is today, but Ted King was the harbinger of all of that, in my mind. 

Ted's draw on other seasoned Pro road folks to come and try gravel events cannot be underestimated. Definitely a Hall worthy choice!

John Hobbs:

While the task of deciding exactly when or where the modern gravel era started, it’s clear that John Hobbs was an early visionary in the sport. As far back as the mid-1980s, Hobbs was hosting formal “rough road rides” in the southern Flint Hills of Kansas.

Buoyed by the success of the rides, Hobbs began promoting a ride out of Matfield, KS called the Matfield Green 100k. This evolved into the infamous Kansas Death Ride, an event that was known for being rougher than most mountain bike races. The event’s successful 22-year run, often attracting more than 600 riders, proved that cyclists wanted to explore beyond paved roads, onto roads less traveled. In fact, it was the success of the Kansas Death Ride that inspired a group in Emporia, KS to create the DK200/Unbound Gravel in 2005.

Comments: Long over-due for inclusion, this nomination speaks to me as something the GCHoF needs more focus on. Longtime readers of this blog will understand where I am coming from here. If the GCHoF is about telling the untold stories, then this nomination reflects that perfectly, but it is far, far from the last such story hanging out there that "no one", including many of the electors, knows about. More on this in my overall commentary. 

 Overall Comments: 

This is a great class of inductees and I can 100% get behind all of them. They all are deserving and they all will enhance the GCHoF. They all, however, have one thing in common which, while missing from the GCHoF, is an integral part of this class' stories. 

That would be Jim Cummings. 

Jim is not in the GCHoF, despite the fact that he takes a direct line from John Hobbs' influence, and was the major contributor to the other three being in the Hall. Without Jim Cummings, none of these stories either happen at all, or matter at all. 

So, the question is "Why?" Why is he not in the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame? Is Jim Cummings to be seen as the "Pete Rose" of gravel? Someone who will never be forgiven for something done that had zero to do with gravel cycling? 

I'm not going to get into the weeds on the backstory, or on the reasons I think Jim should be a GCHoF'er. I will only point out that of the people who are in the Hall today, barely anyone can say they would be in the Hall without Jim Cummings and what he did regarding his efforts to promote the DK200. 

So again, the question is "Why isn't he in there?" I cannot answer that. I can say that he's been nominated every year the Hall has existed. But as to why the other electors don't see him as being worthwhile to vote for......? You tell me if you know. 

As for my comment about those stories left hanging out there being untold, well some of those were on the ballot this year as well. This is very good. I hope that the GCHoF will undertake a bit more proactive approach to helping electors too young to remember, or too uninformed to have a proper opinion, to have access to better backstories/history on each of those stories/people/events that were represented there in the ballot for this class. Not everyone/everything can get nominated in a given year, but I saw some things that deserve to be the stories that get told. 

I also saw some things that made me scratch my head. I get that these are submitted by the public, but as I stated a while back in another post, many people are so new to this sport that the old, untold stories are not known to them. On the other hand, some things creep in which have very little to do with gravel. Things and people which don't have anything about them related to gravel in a historical/influential context. This confuses things, in my opinion, and it dilutes the choices made available to electors. So, you have a confusion as to what is important, merely by these things being on the ballot, and a dearth of backstory/historical context being provided.

I cannot help but think that many of the electors who are in the media and cycling industry fall prey to this situation. All I know is that there is precious little done to enlighten the electors as to why certain stories matter, and why certain ones probably do not. 

This would place the onus on the GCHoF board, but at some point you probably need to do two things. First, you need to take nominations in-house to weed out the chaff which currently gets into the machinations of the process via the public. Second: The GCHoF needs to research and provide the narratives on nominees so electors can have an informed vote. 

If I could, I would also have the GCHoF remove a nominee's name after a designated period of years if they do not get elevated into the Hall, just like most professional sports' halls of fame do. 

That's about it. Love this class. There is a glaring omission. And some changes to how things work internally with nominations and voting would be my recommendation going forward. That's just me. My opinion only. If you've got a take on any of this, let me know in the comments. Otherwise, that's all I have to say about it.