When it comes to off-road bike tech, my eyes tend to be rolling while both wide open and winking a lot of late, though at the same time I have to admit it also makes me grin.
- The mountain bike is dead. Long live the MTB!
- Mountain biking has become gentrified… but is that progress?
- Orbea’s Rallon RS may be a glimpse into the future of e-MTB… but I just don’t have the cash
I’m talking about every time I see an ‘all-new’, ‘game-changing’, ‘revolutionary’ or perhaps ‘extreme’ gravel bike released. When using the term extreme, I’m bunching them together somewhat, but I guess we all know the kind of bikes I’m talking about: progressive geometry, full suspension, aerodynamic, all bundled with watt saving promises and elusive performance gains by the bucket load, along with probable life changing experiences too. And all for the pretty price of a small car.
It’s the stuff of life these days, marketing and consumerism. It’s just the way the world – and the bike industry – works, and you can’t blame them for that. Though I can’t help but watch from the sensible, cheap retro seats with that strange mixed bag of emotions, often glazed with a familiar coating of déjà vu, a sprinkling of appreciative logic, a shaving of boyish desire… and then I flip back to reality before I get sucked in too far.
I’m holding on to my cash until the first full suspension, downhill-aero, bikepacking-specific gravel bike comes around, ahem…
The suspense of the past and the future
On the whole, personally, I have no gripes with the emergence of these hybrid beasts of beauty and sometimes pointless confusion; all’s fair when it comes to riding bikes off-road. Although it does very much seem to be heading into a world (they hope) of gravel extremes and dusty niches, which is, I guess, part of the MTB déjà vu I sense at times with this evolution. But how far can you stretch that marketing elastomer and evolution?
Many knock the arrival of suspension on gravel bikes, but certainly not me, or at least to an extent. I’m not going to rumble down the old “gravel is nothing new” or “gravel is just ’90s mountain biking” road, although there are strings of similarity and truth in both.
Sure enough, you can indeed simplify the whole conundrum (or ignore it) and use bigger and softer tyres to ease the trail blows – as was the case in early mountain biking. But, in my opinion, for those who ride beyond super smooth gravel, suspension is a wrist un-jarring gift, or at least if it’s kept simple and short travel and doesn’t come in over-hyped and over-priced.
As for full suspension? Umm, I guess it has its place in gravel, as much for adding to one-bike off-road versatility and comfort over anything else. Even so, is the mountain bike that many gravel riders already have a better all-round choice if you are playing that rough? I’d say so, for most of us.
That said, I’d certainly not shimmy away from one of these bouncy drop bar beasts, if I had the option to hand that is; but buying into the concept and adding in another fairly specific bike, that one I’d probably sidestep.
Progressive geometry? All hail the extreme gravel OG, the Evil Chamois Hager. I’ve never ridden one but would dearly like to – just for the sheer hell and grin factor of it, although I wouldn’t much fancy slugging it on the road and regular gravel roads.
Before it’s pointed out, no, suspension on ‘road’ bikes isn’t new either. In the very early days of MTB suspension, Greg Lemond, Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle and their famous Z team rode and won the cobbled road classic Paris-Roubaix on RockShox with 40mm travel (1991 on), and a couple of years later, Bianchi even trialled and failed a full-suspension road bike in the race. Meanwhile, Steve Bauer also almost won the race on his own ‘long-bike’ – which these days would probably be called ‘progressive geometry’, yet at the time it was somewhat ridiculed.
After that, apart from inserts, suspension never took off on the cobbles of Roubaix, which are pretty extreme and ridden on very skinny tyres too. Will this bouncy retreat happen with gravel suspension?
Grounding myself
As with everything here, these are simply my own thoughts on the subject. There’s little doubt that much of the trend towards ‘extreme’ gravel bikes is all about finding new ways to sell us new bikes and kit, bikes we didn’t know we needed. I guess the trick is in making us think we need them and want them too.
As long as it doesn’t make gravel riding – or rather the competitive/organised side of the sport – less diverse and more exclusive, then I’m all for these innovations, but less so the hype and elusive promises.
In the meantime, I’m keeping it grounded; otherwise, my arm of persuasion might get twisted into submitting to the shiny allure of this new ‘extreme gravel’ world…
