Picture report: Salzkammergut Gravel.one by Scott

She reached Bad Goisern so early and so fast that the event announcers missed her finish altogether: solo, and unlike the men's trios ahead of and behind her, with no sprint theatrics whatsoever - just quick and clean. Finishing seventh overall, Jana Gigele, World Cup racer from Fließ in Tirol, did more than justice to her national champion's stripes at the Gravel-Marathon held as part of the Salzkammergut Trophy.
With a clean start-to-finish victory, the Scott athlete prevailed on the 93-kilometre Gravel.One distance in 3:57:07 hours, crossing the line more than ten minutes ahead of Upper Austria's Paula Schmidl of Edelsten Racing Team - a former top-level fencer and last year's gravel vice-champion.

Local favourite Silke Mair of Team Salzkammergut Biker had to fight her way forward through the field from a high start number, but on the long climb from Hallstatt to Gosau she still managed to pass Hungary's Adrienn Punk and Styria's Eva Rechberger, rounding out the podium.
Theresa Rindler-Bachl, another pre-race favourite - last year's winner on the Trophy's extreme distance and already successful several times this year on mountain bike and gravel bike in Africa - had to abandon after just under an hour, however.

In the men's race, Salzburg's Dominik Hödlmoser (Hrinkow Advarics) took victory in 3:23:13 hours. The reigning cyclocross national champion used a narrow section on the eastern shore of Lake Hallstatt to launch an attack and pull a small gap on the field. By Obertraun his lead stood at just under a minute; by Lake Gosau he had stretched it to over seven minutes. By the second climb to Schäferalm, the professional rider already had an eleven-minute cushion, with victory all but wrapped up.
Max Riese (gravgrav.cc) also had a strong race. He did a lot of the early pace-setting and went into the climb to Roßalm alongside Slovakia's Adam Durica, Germany's Dennis Vogt and Moritz Rosenegger, plus Slovenia's Adam Jordan. Only Durica was able to more or less match his pace. At Lake Gosau the pair trailed Hödlmoser by around seven and twelve minutes respectively, and neither surrendered their position for the rest of the race.

What you see between the orange crowd barriers on the paved square in front of the former bathhouse is about as colourful a mix as you'll find: seasoned pros, rising young talents, nervous first-timers, experienced regulars. Legends of years past stand next to today's leading amateur women, gravel community managers next to perfectly ordinary weekend riders, old next to young, freaky next to understated.
Most jersey sleeves are cut to a modern elbow length, skin-tight fabric wraps strikingly well-trained bodies in fashionably airy cuts, and plenty of shorts bulge out at the sides: whatever won't fit in a jersey pocket ends up, for true gravel racers, in the thigh pocket instead.

Just this look over the start field already tells you what the numbers will later confirm officially: the gravel marathon has established itself as an essential addition to the Salzkammergut Trophy. 300 participants - roughly ten percent of everyone racing on Trophy Saturday - lined up with drop bars and narrow tyres this year.
It wasn't always like that. When the Trophy organisers staged a gravel marathon back in 2017, as one of the first event organisers in Europe to do so, turnout didn't even justify a results list of its own. "In the second year we renamed the event the Cyclocross Marathon, because nobody had yet worked out what on earth gravel was supposed to be," mastermind Martin Huber recalls with a grin, looking back on the tenth anniversary.

Right at the far end of the front row stands Jana Gigele. The red-white-red stripes across her chest mark her out for exactly what she is: the reigning gravel national champion. The Scott lettering above hints that there's more to the story.
For the record: the soon-to-be 29-year-old has already claimed a World Cup podium this year at her home race on the Wörthersee, finished 5th at the UCI World Series event in Scotland, picked up another 5th place at the renowned Ranxo Gravel in the scene's Catalan mecca, and represented Austria at last year's Gravel European and World Championships - despite only taking up gravel riding in 2024 and having been a serious cyclist for barely four years.

You can practically read the anticipation on the Tirolean's face. New region, new people, new race, new terrain - there's plenty here today for her to explore, and she's clearly relishing it.
Word of the Salzkammergut Trophy's reputation as a bucket-list event with legendary atmosphere set against a magnificent landscape reached the former professional skier quite some time ago. Barely connected to the MTB scene and mostly racing internationally, she reckons today's outing feels "like a cool holiday" - one she intends to enjoy to the full.

On three, two, one, Jana sets off alongside 168 fellow gravel aficionados into the Gravel.One adventure. Her day's work covers 93.3 kilometres and 2,141 metres of climbing, the latter essentially packed into just two ascents.
That's unusual by international gravel-race standards, and reasonably tough even by Alpine-republic measures. Admittedly, moving the start this year from Obertraun to Bad Ischl smoothed out the numbers a little on the long distance: the two notorious climbing tests up to Roßalm and Schäferalm are now preceded by 26 largely flat, fast kilometres along the Traun river and Lake Hallstatt. That did nothing, however, to soften the rather steep and technically demanding character of the section that follows.
"There are such chunky rocks on the last descent, a puncture is practically guaranteed," veteran racer Thomas Widhalm was already wishing the day before for tyres wider than the 40s he'd fitted. Jana Gigele, on the other hand, likes it when things get technical and, although she describes herself as more "punchy, sprint-oriented", has nothing against long climbs either. Normally quite the overthinker when it comes to setup, she's simply riding what she's got this time round - because it works: a UCI-compliant Scott Addict Gravel RC with a 42/10-46 gear ratio and 45 mm tyres on 30 mm-wide Fulcrum Sharq GR wheels.

"If I'm still up front after the first hill, it could go well - after all, it flattens out again after that," the double national champion had reasoned beforehand (a graduate of the Stams ski high school, she once picked up an Austrian championship title on skis too). And that's exactly how it went. Only better.
Because when you've spent your years on road and gravel bikes - however few - immersed in (international) racing right from the start, you know how to hold your own in a tight field and nervous early jostling. So she came through the first metres of climbing up to the Wildenstein ruins light-footed, and through the flat stretch along the eastern shore path with energy to spare. The narrow spots along this deluxe lakeside promenade did mean that Paula Schmidl was able to close back up in the resulting bottleneck, so the two of them started the climb to Roßalm together. But already in the Echerntal valley - as steep as it is wildly romantic - the hoped-for flow kicked in, and Jana pulled steadily away like clockwork.
"From there on I just rode my own pace," is how the eventual winner puts it, simply. And with that surge she didn't just dominate the women's field - much like Marlies Feichtenhofer on the Gravel.Two (8th overall) and Lisa Kronberger on the Gravel.Three (3rd overall) - she also left most of the men in the field behind her.

If you've had a look at Jana's Instagram in the meantime and thought, "No wonder, with a privileged pro-athlete lifestyle like that!" - think again.
The trained personal trainer, who also holds a degree in health management, works full-time as an account manager at Lease a Bike. True, her working life plays out almost entirely remotely and can be arranged fairly flexibly. "But I still have to put in my 40 hours," she says, setting the record straight on the online image of the globetrotting professional cyclist.

Her goal, of course, is a professional racing career, and the signs are good: consistent results, visible progression, and savvy social media management.
Offering her 24,000 followers inspiring content isn't just a commercial necessity, though - it's also a personal passion: "Your pace, your journey. Do it however you feel is right, and don't let anyone pressure you along the way. That's the message I especially want to get across to women," she says, the words tumbling out the moment her online presence comes up - from a late starter who was once motivated to take up cycling by none other than MTB marathon world champion Alban Lakata.

Her agenda: empowerment, sharing passion, encouraging sustainable, long-term participation in sport. Jana's own online recap of the Salzkammergut Trophy reflects exactly that: "Couldn't have done it without my amazing people and partners. Stoked to have had the legs to lead from start to finish and take the win on such a demanding course, packed with brutal climbs and crazy weather conditions. Moments like these make all the hard work worth it."
Because naturally, in 2026 the Salzkammergut once again bared its teeth - not just topographically, but meteorologically too: heavy downpours briefly put the picturesque, imposing scenery around Lake Gosau and Lake Hallstatt underwater in the early afternoon, making progress correspondingly adventurous.
But "Once to Hell and Back" wouldn't be what it is if the crowds along the route didn't help riders through every uncertainty, and if the atmosphere at the finish didn't make you forget every ounce of effort - even when, despite being the winner, you get overlooked …