By the time Pete Stetina says the words out loud, it is clear he has been living with them for some time.
At 38, the former WorldTour climber and one of gravel racing’s earliest true converts is stepping away from the pursuit that has defined his life since he was 16: the relentless chase of performance, results and podiums. Not from the bike itself, but from the version of cycling that demands everything, all the time.
“There’s this notion of feeding the rat,” Stetina says. “You have to keep feeding it, and it almost becomes an addiction at one point.”
A life shaped by the bike
Stetina grew up inside the sport. He is the son of former U.S. national champion and two-time Coors Classic winner Dale Stetina, and the nephew of Wayne Stetina, another national champion and Olympian. Brothers whom Stetina describes as the “dynamic duo” of American racing in the 1970s and 1980s. And by the time U.S. road cycling surged in popularity during the Lance Armstrong years, Stetina was already firmly on a path of his own.
He rose quickly through the American development system, earning national-team selections and spending his formative years racing in Europe. As an under-23, he got a taste of the yellow leader’s jersey at the Tour de l’Avenir, an early signal of his promise as a climber and stage racer. By his early twenties, Stetina had reached the WorldTour, carving out a long career with Garmin-Sharp, BMC Racing Team and Trek-Segafredo, valued for his ability to survive deep into the mountains on cycling’s biggest stages.
His WorldTour years were defined less by headline wins than by trust and durability. He raced all the Grand Tours and was a key mountain lieutenant in Ryder Hesjedal’s 2012 Giro d’Italia victory. And when opportunities did arise, he showed his own depth with podiums and top-tens at the Tour of California, Tour of Utah and Tour of Colorado.
Some less-glorious moments reshaped him just as deeply, he says, pointing to a horrific crash in the Basque Country, which left him with a broken leg and a long road back.
All told, Stetina enjoyed a solid, respected WorldTour career, one that ended not through necessity but opportunity. Rather than step away quietly or chase marginal contracts, he built a future in the then-little-known world of gravel racing, helping to define what the discipline could become.
"When I left the WorldTour, I didn't retire. I said, This is a discipline in its own right, and I’m going to come race it. It deserves to have its own professionals," Stetina recalls.
In 2019, gravel racing was still a loosely defined space. There were must-do events and some personalities, but little structure and no clear professional pathway. Stetina built his own, coining the term “privateering” to describe a one-man operation that combined racing, sponsorship, logistics and promotion.
“I based my career on gravel,” he says. “I was going to sink or swim with this ship.”
And the leap was rewarded on the results sheet. Stetina emerged as one of gravel racing’s early standard-bearers, winning Traka in Europe and the Crusher in the Tushar in the U.S., while consistently featuring at the front of events like Unbound Gravel, Belgian Waffle Ride California and Leadville. In a discipline still defining itself, he proved that a full-time gravel career was not only possible, but sustainable and fulfilling.
Six years on, the landscape is barely recognisable. Gravel racing is global, hyper-competitive and increasingly professionalised. For Stetina, that evolution has been both a gift and a mirror.
“I came to gravel to have a more fulfilling and fun experience,” he says. “And I almost feel like I’m back in the WorldTour that I left. That’s not a negative thing, but it’s so high-performance now. It extended my career even more than I ever thought possible.”
It also delayed the reckoning. “I never really did retire,” he says. “I just transitioned disciplines. Now it's time."
Why now?
Asked what made this the moment, Stetina pauses. “It’s a lot of things,” he says. “It’s complicated.”
Age plays its part, as does motivation. The hunger that once defined him no longer burns in quite the same way. “The endless pursuit of another race, another performance; it’s starting to get tiresome and not fulfilling,” he says. “Winning doesn’t mean the same anymore.”
Family plays a factor, too. “A big part of it is not having the bike dictate every angle of family life,” Stetina explains. “The bike would have to come on every family vacation. That’s not fair to my wife, to my kids growing up. I want to be more present at home.”
And then there is the sport itself. Gravel, the space that once gave him freedom, has evolved into something far sharper-edged. “I love it,” he says. “But it’s changed from what it was in 2019.”
This year was always meant to be the end. And for his last hoorah, Stetina had planned his 2025 season around one final target: the Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb.
The Mount Washington climb is short, brutal and steeped in American bike racing history. Contested and won by Tour de France veterans, Olympians and national champions such as Tyler Hamilton, Tom Danielson, Ned Overend and Jeannie Longo, the event covers just 7.4 miles (11.9 km) but climbs 4,678 feet (1,425 m) at an average 12.6% gradient, with ramps that pitch up to 22%.
His father, Dale, held the record on the climb for 17 years. When organisers reset the record books in 2022 after paving the final gravel section, Stetina saw an opportunity to reconnect with that family legacy.
“My overriding desire was to do it all right, one last time,” he says. “So that I could put myself to pasture at peace.”
He committed fully. “I went all in this year,” Stetina says, from dieting and altitude camps to bike modifications. “I wanted no regrets.”
There was also the hope that Mount Washington might provide a "beautiful moment" to close this competitive chapter: a victory, a final high point, a place to announce his retirement.
But the beautiful moment never came. Illness struck at the wrong time, and on race day Stetina could only watch as his close friend Ian Boswell rode away and claimed the win.
“This was one of the poorest seasons of my career,” he admits. “Something went wrong every race. And Mount Washington was the epitome of that. I put so much into that record and that family legacy. Looking back, I was trying to control and write my own destiny, and no one gets to do that.”
That tension is what Feeding the Rat, the documentary that accompanies Stetina’s retirement announcement, is really about. The short film captures the reckoning that comes at the end of an athletic career: knowing when to let go and how much purpose to attach to performance.
For Stetina, the bike has been his career, his community, his second life partner, and he admits he is nervous about what comes next.
One Last Lap
“I’m nervous,” Stetina says plainly. “When you retire as an athlete, it can be a midlife crisis.”
After more than two decades of measuring life in training blocks, race calendars and marginal gains, he is acutely aware of what can happen when that structure disappears overnight. “When this is all you’ve done since you were 16, you need to put that intensity somewhere else,” he says. “And if you don’t, you can spiral.”
That awareness has shaped the way he is choosing to step away. Rather than draw a hard line under his racing career, Stetina is opting for a long, deliberate exit. One that allows space to adjust, reflect and redirect. “I like the long tail,” he explains. “I think when riders just stop, you see people get in trouble. They don’t know what’s next.”
Part of that process is a farewell tour: a limited series of races that matter to him personally. “There’s no pinnacle,” he says. “It’s just a collection.” Levi’s GranFondo in his hometown of Santa Rosa, Belgian Waffle Ride California, Mid South, Oregon Trail and Steamboat. All places that shaped his gravel career and still hold meaning beyond results.
“I’m really grateful that I get to do it on my terms,” Stetina says. “It’s so rare in this sport. Usually, the sport decides when you’re done.”
Alongside that gradual goodbye, he is stepping into a new role that keeps him close to the sport without being consumed by it. Stetina will extend his relationship with Canyon and several long-time partners, attending races not as a podium hunter but as a Spielertrainer, a player-coach helping guide the next generation of gravel professionals.
“I’m truly just retiring from the pursuit of pro podiums and being a professional athlete and what that entails,” he says. "I want to keep going to these events and explore them in different ways. Maybe sometimes I’ll be quick, but that’s not the objective.”
The motivation now lies in helping others navigate a world he helped build. “When I started in gravel, there wasn’t a formula,” he says. “Now it’s a thing, which is awesome, but there’s this whole subset of younger pros who don’t know how to do it yet.”
Drawing on his WorldTour background and years of privateering, Stetina hopes to help younger riders learn not just how to race, but how to build a sustainable career.
"At this point, I feel like I've had a Master's in sports marketing just from having to privateer...so I'm going to help these young talents truly excel, especially Canyon's current and soon-to-be-announced new signings," he shares.
Still, the habits of a lifetime do not disappear overnight. “It’s weird,” he admits. “Even today, I went out and did a really hard ride, because it’s fun, but it’s also a habit. But I’m done living for speed on the bike, you know?"
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