Life Time Grand Prix is the closest thing American off-road cycling has to a proper season-long championship — an invite-only points series that pits the same field of professional gravel and mountain bike racers against each other across six of the country's most demanding events, from April through October. Life Time launched it in 2022, bundling marquee races it already owned or partnered with (Sea Otter, Unbound, Leadville, Chequamegon, and Big Sugar, with Crusher in the Tushar in the original lineup) into a single narrative arc with a season-ending prize purse.
The concept worked: it elevated the profile of every race in the series, pulled in real mainstream coverage with live broadcast, and created genuine season-long storylines in a sport that previously lived race to race. The lineup has shifted a bit since 2022 — Crusher dropped out, Little Sugar MTB joined for 2025 — but the core idea has stayed the same: an invited field competing across all six races for a share of a $350,000 season-ending purse.
For 2026, the series comprises Sea Otter Classic Gravel, Unbound Gravel 200, Leadville Trail 100 MTB, Chequamegon MTB Festival, Little Sugar MTB, and Big Sugar Gravel — deliberately mixing disciplines (200 miles of flat Kansas gravel, high-altitude MTB, technical Wisconsin forest roads) to reward the most complete off-road athlete rather than a specialist in any one format.
Each athlete's best five of six race results count toward the overall standings — every rider gets one drop race, which is removed from their tally after Race 4 (Chequamegon) once the season's shape is clearer. Points are awarded by finishing position at each event. Athletes must start at least five of the six races to remain eligible for the season-ending prize purse, and at least four to stay on the standings at all.
Big Sugar Gravel, the finale, is mandatory for every athlete regardless of position in the standings, and it doubles as the series tiebreaker if the overall title is still undecided going in — which has produced some of the tightest finishes in the series' short history.
The season-ending purse totals $350,000, split evenly between the top 10 men and top 10 women, with the overall winner in each category earning $50,000. A separate $240,000 is distributed across individual events, with Unbound and Leadville each paying $60,000 to their top five finishers. New for 2026: any athlete who completes the full season (minimum three finishes) outside the top 10 earns a $2,500 completion bonus — recognition for the grind of racing all six without a payday.
Sofía Gómez Villafañe's three consecutive women's titles (2023–2025) make her the defining figure of the series to date; Keegan Swenson's run of three straight men's titles before Cameron Jones unseated him by a single point in 2025 gives the series its first real changing-of-the-guard storyline heading into 2026.
For 2026, the field includes the top five finishers from 2025 automatically re-qualified, the reigning U23 program champions (Ruth Holcomb and Griffin Hoppin), a roster of 25 men and 25 women, and six wild-card spots awarded after Sea Otter and Unbound. A second-year Under-23 program runs its own parallel leaderboard across five of the six races (all but Unbound 200), with the top U23 finishers earning automatic entry into the following year's full field.