Things You Might Not Have Known About Gravel Bikes
Cycling Weekly takes a look at Gravel bikes.
As the discipline as boomed, it seems as though the tech hasn't been able to keep up with the level of popularity and it's left the bikes feeling a bit confused. We've rounded up all of those flaws and told you everything that we hate about gravel bikes. They are by no means perfect and there's a few things you should know before buying a gravel bike.
As the discipline as boomed, it seems as though the tech hasn't been able to keep up with the level of popularity and it's left the bikes feeling a bit confused. We've rounded up all of those flaws and told you everything that we hate about gravel bikes. They are by no means perfect and there's a few things you should know before buying a gravel bike.
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00:00 Gravel bikes. What's not to like about them? They're incredibly versatile, they're good for
00:04 both evening blasts and multi-day treks, and capable of handling a whole spectrum of terrain,
00:11 from pan-flat double track to swooping single track. Gravel bikes even make for a pretty handy
00:17 urban utility steed, with their plethora of mounts and chunky tyres. Of course, there are plenty of
00:23 reasons to buy a different style of bike, whether you're racing on the roads or hitting up gnarlier
00:28 trails, but you can't really criticise gravel bikes for not performing in spheres that they
00:34 simply weren't designed for. That's not really very fair. Still, despite being the cycling
00:39 industry's current golden child, there are still some pervasive problems that the overwhelming
00:44 majority of bike brands could do with addressing. So, without further ado, here are some things that
00:51 really annoy us about gravel bikes. Gravel bikes are really over-geared. Even with the gravel-specific
01:01 group sets currently on the market, the gears offered on gravel bikes simply don't go low
01:06 enough for a huge swathe of their intended use. Sure, gravel riding on open double track is
01:12 perfectly well catered for, but when riding off-road with a full set of bikepacking bags,
01:18 the gears simply don't go low enough. Let's put things into perspective with Trek's XE racing
01:24 machine, the Supercaliber. In the top-level racing spec, it comes with a 34-tooth chainring and a
01:30 10-52 cassette. So as not to overstuff this section with numbers, I'll use the Supercaliber
01:36 setup as a reference point and then relay everything back to that. And do remember that
01:41 the Supercaliber is set up for racing. XE courses can be very steep, but so too can the trails that
01:49 you find yourself on with a gravel bike. And racers don't have to contend with all the kit
01:54 that you would be carrying if you were bikepacking. Sure, with SRAM AXS and Shimano Di2, you can set
02:00 up road shifters to work with mountain bike cassettes and get similar ranges, but let's
02:05 keep this to setups that have single-tooth jumps in the cassette progression for smoother riding
02:10 on the roads. With those as the rules, SRAM offers the lowest gearing with a 43-30 crankset and a 12-speed
02:19 10-36 cassette. Then comes Campagnolo, pairing a 13-speed 10-44 cassette to a 38-tooth chainring,
02:28 followed by Shimano, which boasts only a 46-30 crankset and an 11-speed 11-36 cassette.
02:35 But all three of those options give a bottom gear that falls in between the second and third easiest
02:41 ratios on the Trek Supercaliber. A cross-country mountain bike has two gears lower than the lowest
02:47 gravel bike, and in the case of SRAM and Campagnolo, both those options are seriously expensive.
02:54 You only need to look at the Trek 520 Touring bike and its 26-36 bottom gear to see that
03:00 gravel bikes have remained hopelessly overgeared for a large amount of the segment of the riding
03:04 that they're supposed to be designed for. Traditional rack mounts are disappearing.
03:13 The versatility of gravel bikes is one of their major selling points. Yes, aesthetics can be
03:19 divisive. Surly's bottle-boss heavy approach gave rise to the term "fork-warts", but there
03:24 are options for mitigating their visual impact, from zip bits to plain simple grub screws.
03:30 But with that in mind, it's more of a shame that more and more gravel bike brands
03:34 are removing more and more traditional mounting points, at the same time as decking out the fork
03:39 legs, top tube and down tube. The humble rear rack and mudguard mounts don't cause any problems with
03:45 cross-compatibility, and their usefulness as a cheap and easy way of boosting your
03:49 luggage carrying capacity and ability to stay dry is unquestionable. We would hazard a guess
03:56 that the bike industry doesn't want to dilute the gravel look of saddlepack, frame bag and bar bag
04:02 and other bikepacking paraphernalia with that of an old-fashioned set of panniers and mudguards.
04:09 But we say, if there's no good reason for taking those mounts away,
04:13 why impose this arbitrary limitation of what people can and can't do with their own bike?
04:19 The vast choice of tyres is a blessing and a curse. Much like road and mountain biking,
04:30 there's a whole load of different tyre options out there to riders. However,
04:34 unlike both road and mountain biking, the gravel tyre has the very tough job of trying to perform
04:39 well on multiple terrains. This means that there's a whole lot of options out there,
04:45 but it does create a bit of a double-edged sword situation. On one hand, you've got plenty of
04:50 choice for whatever parkour you'd want to ride on, but on the other hand, you're left wondering
04:55 what part of the ride you want your tyres to perform best on. Do you choose something that
05:00 works for all the muddy trails around you, or do you opt for something that works really well for
05:04 all the fast riding that you do, or do you opt for some sort of halfway house that only kind of
05:10 works on both? Tyre choice can be a really tough one to navigate and it often results in a lot of
05:16 trial and error before you find something that works really well for your local area. But we
05:21 do wish that the process of choosing a tyre was a little simpler, and actually, this takes me quite
05:27 nicely onto my next point. There aren't enough aggressive tyre options for gravel bikes. This
05:36 is less one for the frame manufacturers and probably one for the manufacturers of tyres.
05:42 Why can't a decent mud tyre for gravel bikes be produced? It really doesn't make any sense why
05:48 this segment of the market is just so barren. Of course, there are 33mm wide tyres which are
05:55 directed at the cyclocross market, and these models are excellent in deep and sloppy mud,
06:01 but in being so narrow, it makes it hard for them to be used anywhere else, especially where they
06:07 may be subject to impacts on the rim from rocks and roots. At the other end, the mountain bike
06:13 sphere is absolutely jam-packed with as many mud-specific models that you could shake a stick
06:18 at, but they all typically come in at 2.3 inches in their smallest size, so they just don't fit the
06:24 overwhelming majority of gravel bikes. Quite simply, what's needed is a tyre that comes in
06:30 a width from 40mm to 56mm that has widely spaced and tall knobs, so as to dig into the slop and
06:38 then quickly shed any of the mud that gets picked up. There are some models, like the Schwalbe
06:43 Ultra bikes, which get close, but these could do with slightly taller knobs, and ones that aren't
06:49 quite so thin in lateral direction. Squares are generally better than rectangles. For some riders
06:56 in desert-y conditions, the need for such a tyre won't even register, but for riders whose trails
07:02 turn into mush in the winter, well, we would be very grateful for more aggressive gravel tyres.
07:08 Gravel bikes are quite expensive. Aren't gravel bikes just expensive drop-bar mountain bikes,
07:18 or hybrid bikes? Well, we'll happily talk for hours about the nuances between them,
07:23 but doesn't that kind of cut to the heart of the issue? Many of the differences are indeed nuances.
07:31 Yes, there are cases when a gravel bike is best, when the need for speed and off-road capability
07:37 is balanced just so that either a road bike or a mountain bike simply won't cut it. But,
07:43 for long rides that are more about the adventure rather than speed,
07:46 is a gravel bike really that much better? Really? With a strong road background, there is much to
07:53 be said about the familiarity of drop-bar shifters and the position that you adopt on the bike,
07:59 but in terms of the roads that you'll be able to cover and the sights you'll be able to see,
08:03 you'll do just as well on a hybrid bike, but with the gear range, the tyre clearance,
08:08 and all the mounting points that you could ever need. The Cube Travel is an excellent example of
08:13 this. It combines a dynamo front light, full-length mudguards, a pannier rack, a robust kickstand,
08:20 and clearance for tyres up to 2.15 inches in size. It does have a 3x9 drivetrain, but the jumps
08:27 between the gears are hardly any bigger than you'd find on a 10-speed 11-36 cassette that you'd get
08:33 with any entry-level Shimano GRX, and the absolute range is much greater at both ends compared to any
08:40 of the other gravel group sets. And all of that for about a grand. It's a struggle to even get
08:44 hydraulic disc brakes on a gravel bike for that price, let alone anything else.
08:53 Gravel bikes can be a bit of a halfway house. When you look at a gravel bike,
08:58 it may be easy to see them as a glorified parts bin from a big bike manufacturer.
09:02 You've got drop bars paired with big burly tyres that are generally mated to 700c wheels,
09:08 and more often than not, a fully rigid frame, but with a group set which is just as confused.
09:13 You'll have shifters that look like they've come from a road bike, and gearing as if from an XC
09:18 bike. While this slightly bizarre combination of components may seem haphazard, it does culminate
09:24 in a machine that will allow you to power over rough terrain. As we all know though,
09:28 rough terrain can encompass a hugely wide variety of parkours. So while you can set your gravel rig
09:34 up to take on what most may potentially opt for a hardtail mountain bike, you can also create a
09:39 build that's streamlined for fast rolling gravel roads. The result is something that may never be
09:45 the ideal weapon of choice, but does work the majority of the time. We've seen the pros take
09:51 to gravel at the Tour de France aboard the same bikes that they race on the road with.
09:55 We've also seen Mathieu van der Poel adapt a Canyon Ultimate to run gravel tyres, which he
10:00 then went on to pilot to third place at the Gravel World Championships, with his teammate going on to
10:06 win the race. So while it is annoying that in many circumstances there will be another bike that will
10:12 do the job better, we can't also deny the sheer versatility that a gravel bike provides.
10:17 Well, there we have it. That's everything that annoys me about gravel bikes...
10:22 so far. Is there anything else that you think I've missed out? Let me know down in the comments
10:27 below. If you enjoyed the video, then please do drop it a like, subscribe to the channel
10:31 for more content, and I'll see you again very soon.
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