25 Years of Racing at the Green Mountain Stage Race
It was 2001 on a warm afternoon in a dusty, makeshift parking lot off Vermont Route 2 in Bolton. Almost 700 riders of all ages and abilities were gathered to take on the prologue of the inaugural Green Mountain Stage Race. Among them were some of the best riders in North America, including the McCormack brothers, Frank and Mark, with dozens of major titles between them, and the brilliant climber, Scott Moninger. Also in the mix were the likes of elite masters’ racers Glenn Swann and Ann Marie Miller and riders ranging through various categories down to 17 unlicensed novices competing in a citizens category. The route: a short but, in places, painfully steep climb up the access road to the Bolton Valley ski area.
For 14 years until 2000, bike racing on Labor Day weekend in Vermont had been a mainstay on the annual cycling calendar, under the banner of the Killington Stage Race. But when financial issues forced the shutdown of the KSR, organizers of the GMSR jumped in quickly to fill the gap in the national cycling schedule. After all, riders were already used to the idea of coming at summer’s end to Vermont for a long weekend of stage racing. In addition, the Burlington Criterium and the two-gap Mad River Road Race had been around for a while, so the idea of racing in the Mad River Valley and Vermont’s queen city was nothing new. Combining the two races as stages of a four-day event made immeasurable sense. The groundwork for a great stage race had been laid.
Initially, the GMSR was a points race, based on placings in each stage rather than on overall time. The idea was to spread the wealth among different rider types — climbers, crit specialists, sprinters, etc., theoretically producing a winner who was the best multi-skilled, all-round rider. In the end in that first year, Moninger claimed the title of the first GMSR champion among the elite men, but his nonpareil climbing ability alone wasn’t the secret to his success. He also managed to score big points by finishing second in the criterium, where climbers usually go to die.
What about the elite women? Early the next summer, while out on a casual ride, one of the GMSR organizers ran into Genevieve Jeanson, the superlative Canadian cyclist, at the top of Appalachian Gap. Her powerful Rona team had come from its homebase in Quebec to the Mad River Valley for a hill-training session. It was suggested that she might want to try the GMSR, and when she did, holy smokes. For the next two years, 2002 and 2003, she not only won every stage, she blew the field away. Her coup de grace: In Stage 2 in 2002, she finished atop App Gap, in a solo breakaway, almost 17 minutes ahead of the next rider.
Alas, glory is fleeting. Later it was found that she had been doping with EPO for years, so her exemplary GMSR exploits remain tainted. And yet . . . she was an obvious natural talent, a uniquely gifted rider. Had she not been doping, perhaps her winning Stage 2 margin in 2002 would have been only 12 minutes. Who knows? Jeanson was the first of among a host of strong Canadians to win the elite women’s race; it wasn’t until the 2007 race that Amy Dombroski became the first American winner, barely edging out Canadian Kristen Lasasso.
The next year, an American woman was a winner, too, most notably in the Cat 3/4 field. Evelyn Stevens was taking a break from her life in the New York financial world to explore an intense interest in bike racing. In winning the opening time trial by a comfortable margin, she indicated that that interest was well placed. But it wasn’t until Stage 3 with its emphasis on climbing, that her exceptional talent came to the fore.
On a solo break while nearing the top of App Gap, she passed the leaders of the women’s elite field, which had started five minutes ahead of her field. Realizing the embarrassment of getting caught by a relatively novice rider, the elite woman leaders picked up their pace and repassed Stevens before the finish. Their honor was at least partially restored, but Stevens’ winning time was still faster than the top time of the top women. A message had been sent: Stevens was something special. Four years later, she was representing the U.S. at the London Olympics, where, in a pre-race interview, she credited the GMSR as being instrumental in launching her career.
In those early years, the dominant force on the men’s side was Mark McCormack. In 2003, he became the only man to win the race by winning all four stages, earning a small measure of fame and incredulity by finishing atop App Gap in a 55-tooth chain ring. But winning at the top of the gap wasn’t necessarily the most important thing to McCormack. Finishing first again on App Gap in 2004, after four and a half hard hours in the saddle on an extended, 103-mile elite men’s course, McCormack left the finish area hurriedly, speeding 10 miles on his bike back to the bed-and-breakfast where he was staying. His fast escape wasn’t to allow him to put his legs up for a well-earned rest after an exhausting effort; instead, he was rushing to grab his car and golf clubs to make a mid-afternoon tee time with one of the race organizers. Both Mark and brother Frank were enthusiastic golfers, and for a while, a post-race outing on the Sugarbush course, with the McCormacks and other riders, was de rigueur. (At one point, after hitting a less-than-stellar chip shot, Mark declared himself “a Cat 3 golfer.”)
The GMSR remained a points race through 2007. But hearing from riders and others that the results for a proper stage race should be based on time, organizers made the switch in 2008 to an overall-time race. (A points jersey continued to be awarded.) That might have seemed like a change destined to favor the featherweight climbing specialists, given the time margins that often formed on the hilly, double-gap stage. But not necessarily . . . In 2010, national cyclocross champion Jeremy Powers, a pretty sizeable fellow, took the title. A year later, the champion was Tom Zirbel, a 200-pound time trial star. And Zirbel didn’t even win in his specialty, the opening time trial (on the course used in today’s GMSR). He was, however, the winner two days later at the top of App Gap, so who says big guys can’t go uphill?
Organizing a stage race comes with an obvious litany of challenges — getting local permits, making sure courses are open and safe to ride, securing sponsors, recruiting police, officials, and volunteers, timing fields to minimize overlapping, and so on. But no challenge was greater than preparations for the 2011 race. Five days before the race, Tropical Storm Irene pummeled Vermont with torrents of rain, causing more than $700 million in damage to the state’s roadways. Portions of the Stage 3 course through Granville Gulf and beyond were severely damaged or washed away entirely.
One sensible option would have been to cancel the race. Indeed, many folks in the Mad RIver Valley community thought all local efforts should be focused on flood recovery rather than be distracted by some frivolous event like a bike race. But race organizers saw an opportunity to make a statement to the world about Vermont’s resilient ability to bounce back from hardship (“Vermont strong” is a slogan on state license plates) and decided to hold the race regardless. In just a few days, a new Stage 3 course, heading north through Waterbury before finishing at the top of App Gap, was mapped out, new permits secured, police and volunteers re-assigned, new signage posted, and so on. It was a mad scramble, but somehow the modified race came together. What’s more, the community benefitted from racers donating a $40,000 toward local flood-recovery efforts.
Weather, of course, is always a factor in bike racing, or in any other outdoor sport, for that matter. But never in the 25 years of the GMSR did weather have a bigger impact on the racing than on Stage 3 in 2017. At the top of App Gap, wind gusts exceeding 40 miles an hour were blowing a hard rain sideways. The temperature dipped into the 40s. All over the course, riders were abandoning, taking shelter in course-side coffee shops, gas stations, and the like. Parents, coaches, and family members were frantically inquiring about riders unaccounted for, of which there were many. Roughly 25 percent of the starters in all fields that day didn’t finish, and after one particularly forceful wind gust, one official called the conditions “Wagnerian.” Indeed, it was an operatically dramatic day of racing.
The race was growing, with a total of more than 900 riders at a high point. (One interesting and unexplained jump in participation came recently in the elite women’s field, which from 2023 through 2025 more than doubled in size compared with the fields in previous years.) But the growth was not only in size but in prestige. Over the years, the elite men’s race has been considered an event of such significance that it has been able to attract numerous riders who have gone on to solid careers on the World Tour in Europe. Typical was a guy like Canadian Hugo Houle, who, after competing in the GMSR, became a full-time pro in Europe, riding in the Tour de France six times and winning a stage on a breakaway in 2022. Or like another Canadian, Mike Woods, who rode in 13 grand tours and in one year almost won Liege-Bastogne-Liege, one of Europe’s pre-eminent one-day classics.
But the greatest growth in prestige came in the junior race. For the first few years of the race, the junior fields were small, with the rider representation largely regional. But along about 2005, top junior teams in Canada and the U.S., such as the powerful Hot Tubes squad, began taking interest and putting the GMSR on their schedules. Leading junior racers, including U.S. and Canadian national champions, became regular participants.
Perhaps the first GMSR junior to make a significant mark as a successful international competitor was Nate Brown, the 2008 winner. After turning pro, Brown raced in Europe for the Garmin-Sharp (EF Education) team, where he competed in the Tour de France in 2017 and briefly wore the King of the Mountains polka-dot jersey. But Brown retained fond memories of the GMSR and returned, while still a European-based pro, to compete in the 2018 and 2019 editions. And he did it on his own — given the vagaries of pro contracts and schedules, he came without a supporting team and listed his affiliation as “Unattached,” even though he wore his pro team kit.
By 2015, the junior field had swelled to 75 riders, with the GC winner being Canadian Derek Gee (margin of victory: one second!). A year later, more than 90 juniors hit the start line, prominent among them being current European star Matteo Jorgensen. Jorgensen won the opening time trial but could do no better than fourth in the final GC.
That was a pretty good indication of how stiff the junior competition had become. Jorgensen, of course, has gone on to become one of the top riders on the powerful Visma/Lease-a-bike pro team, twice winning the Paris-Nice stage race and finishing in the top 10 in the 2024 Tour de France. Another top-10 finisher in the 2024 Tour also happened to be Gee (now married, Gee-West). Magnus Sheffield, the 2018 GMSR junior winner, hasn’t been far behind, with numerous top results on the World Tour and currently ranking among the top 100 riders in the world. And more recent GMSR junior champions, in particular AJ August (2021 winner) and Ashlin Barry (2022 and 2023 winner) appear poised to launch compelling World Tour careers. Several publications are now calling the GMSR the top junior race in the country.
The GMSR, of course, is not just a bike race but an anthology of stories filled with drama, humor, anguish, and pathos. And sometimes silliness — like the story of a rider forced on a bet by a fellow rider to make the climb up App Gap carrying a waffle iron. Or sometimes questionable decision-making, like the story of veteran rider Anne-Marie Miller crashing badly on Stage 2 and then, after released from the hospital with a concussion, returning to ride Stage 3, only to crash again. In retrospect, it was a bad call by organizers and officials: they should never have allowed her to return to the race.
There was the time when a solid breakaway in the Men’s Pro 1/2 field was led two miles off course by a lead moto; by the time riders in the break realized their mistake and returned to the proper route, their advantage had not only disappeared but they had fallen well behind the peloton. And there was the time when one of the top woman riders — a sprinter, not a climber — stopped at a special pit set up on the dirt road in Bristol and dismounted to chat and flirt with the Mavic guys stationed there, knowing she could socialize with the fellas and still make the time cut. Or the times — more than once — when riders crossed the line at the top of App Gap and executed wheelies while other finishers were gasping for air, acting dazed and confused, and lying prostrate in agony in the parking area. Who has the energy to perform such a playful stunt after a brutal climb featuring pitches exceeding 20 percent?
Courses varied from year to year. The prologue (Stage 1) up the Bolton Valley access road lasted just one year, replaced by a mass-start race up the east side of App Gap, which was replaced by a mass-start race up the Sugarbush Access Road. But riders and organizers realized that a true stage race should include a time trial, and since 2008, Stage 1 has been a 5.2-mile time trial starting in Warren.
The Stage 2 circuit race has moved around, too, usually forced to do so by road damage or bridge construction. The original route, a 17-mile loop, through Duxbury and Moretown, was briefly replaced by a 37-mile loop, starting in Roxbury, where in one year, the elite men’s field behaved so badly that officials threw up their hands in disgust and called the whole thing off, nullifying the stage. In 2016, the circuit race was held on a wonderfully rolling course in Weybridge in the Champlain Valley. The course was so appealing that the circuit race might well have been restaged there. But when the noise of police sirens howling and pelotons zipping by got roadside livestock all hot and bothered, Weybridge locals decided that they had seen enough of the Green Mountain Stage Race. The race returned to the Mad River Valley, before resettling in Randolph, on the 37-mile course (same as the Roxbury course used previously with a different start and finish) in use today.
But as courses shifted there remained one constant: the final climb up App Gap on Stage 3. At times, as in the flood year of 2011, an alternate way of getting there was necessitated, but the grueling finish to the top of the gap has been a part of every GMSR. The twisty-turny, upsy-downsy criterium in Burlington has always been another race highlight, and although street construction in Burlington forced a relocation of the crit in 2025, a return to the traditional course is anticipated this year.
Bike races come and go, but now, a quarter of a century old, the GMSR has proven its longevity.