This yr’s Garmin Unbound Gravel offered by Craft is coming quick, racing in Emporia beginning June 2 for the 350-mile occasion adopted by the 200-mile and different classes on June 3. Through the years, this race has became the premier gravel race within the US and, maybe, the world. Meaning all eyes are on the winners and the bikes that full the gruelling occasions, particularly the 200-mile race, within the least period of time.
Nevertheless, gravel racing is distinctly totally different from the WorldTour. Which may appear apparent however it’s about way over highway surfaces. The athletes, each women and men, have to finish the course with out assist from the huge equipment of staff backing. Model partnerships require far much less capital and the relationships are extra private. The gruelling nature of the ever-changing course, and fewer emphasis on celebrity athletes, additional helps bike option to be open and free with much less at stake. The result’s that followers get to see selections nearer to what they’ve at their native bike store play out on a world stage.
The definition of what the greatest gravel bike is shifts pretty shortly beneath the toes of shoppers, racers, and producers. There’s a fixed push and pull between the totally different teams and as followers, we get to look at it occur within the microcosm that’s the Unbound gravel race. The query in play is what traits can we see?
What was the primary unbound profitable bike?
The primary time Unbound ran was 2006. Again then, the race identify was totally different, as was the vibe. There was no expo to peruse and the beginning grid solely had 34 names. There is no recorded winner within the girls’s class however Dan Hughes accomplished the race in 12 hours and 58 minutes. The bike that was below him was each a world away from what this yr’s profitable bike will seem like and concurrently fairly recognizable.
Hughes accomplished that first Unbound race on a custom-designed steel-framed bike. The person accountable for constructing the bike was Brent Steelman who had been within the enterprise of constructing frames, of every kind, for the reason that early ’80s in Redwood California. Recognized for the flexibility to experiment, that first bike was little question an experiment however seemingly one which labored. The one defining attribute is the battle for area on the rear finish which hasn’t modified all that a lot.
Holding the rear finish of a motorcycle brief retains dealing with snappy and journey high quality responsive. Trying on the bike, it is clear that was precedence primary. From there, the problem was squeezing a 40mm tyre in. That seemingly random dimension is one other one of many issues that has remained remarkably steady by way of the years.
With these two competing pursuits already set, the final consideration was gearing. 1x gearing wasn’t but widespread and the early bike used a mixture of Campagnolo File shifters with an identical rear derailleur plus a Shimano Dura-Ace crank. To search out clearance, and gearing vary, with out the help of a large cassette or a single chainring meant going to the smallest interior chainring attainable. Issues have been nonetheless tight.
The remainder of the bike is usually normal fare for a motorcycle of that age. The wheels used have been Mavic Ksyrium SL which do not checklist an inner width however are solely 19mm exterior, 25mm deep, with really helpful tyre sizes starting from 19 to 28mm. Cantilever brakes noticed use to clear the massive tyres. Geometry is borrowed from cyclocross.
The place issues actually begin to get attention-grabbing is within the center years. It is most likely unattainable to pin down what the primary true client gravel bike was however the Salsa Warbird is undoubtedly a contender for the primary gravel race bike. The primary technology Salsa Warbird hit the market in 2013 and it is one of many first instances {that a} main model began to consider what it takes to go quick off-road with a drop bar bike. With Shimano GRX nonetheless six years sooner or later, the Warbird v1 used a 2x Shimano highway groupset with Avid mechanical disc brakes and clearance for 35mm tyres. A Warbird did not really win at Unbound for some time although.
As an alternative, arguably, Cannondale modified the world of gravel bikes in 2016 with the discharge of the Slate. If there’s anybody bike that signifies what time was like within the expertise of gravel bikes throughout these center years, that is it. When you squint, the Slate is an aluminium-framed highway bike with geometry that sits between the endurance-focused Synapse and the race-focused CAAD12. Then issues get bizarre.
The Cannondale Slate owes homage to the Warbird however the two resolve the challenges in very other ways. As an alternative of counting on geometry, Cannondale tried to remain very “highway like” with the geometry. As an alternative, the model shrunk the wheels to 650b and ballooned the tyre dimension to create a circumference that matched that of a 700x23c highway tyre.
Upfront the fork morphed right into a single-sided lefty with brief journey.
When the Slate hit the market, evaluations on the time did not get it. Was it a highway bike or a gravel bike? Why was the gearing so slim and the geometry so racey? The reply is that the world was within the gravel experimentation years and the purpose was additional exemplified when Ted King took a modified model of the Slate to the highest of the rostrum in 2016.
The Slate doesn’t signify the time due to radical concepts, as a substitute, it’s an instance of the willingness to strive various things. Moderately than a definitive imaginative and prescient of a gravel bike, there was wild experimentation. The identical yr that King gained on the Slate, Amanda Nauman gained on a Niner BSB 9 RDO which is a cyclocross bike. King was working 1x with a 44 tooth chainring and Nauman had 2x with a 50-34. Then in 2017, Mat Stephens took the win on the 3T Exploro aero gravel bike paired with Stan’s No Tubes 700c aero wheels whereas Alison Tetrick notched up one other win for the Slate.
Then, identical to that, the experimentation was gone. 2018 noticed a return to inflexible designs and cyclocross bikes. Kaitlin Keough and Ted King each gained aboard the Cannondale SuperX with 1x drivetrains. Salsa did notch a win that yr, and that bike even had a Lauf Grit leafsprung suspension fork, however it was within the 350XL occasion quite than within the 200-mile distance the place the competitors was fiercest.
The present state of Unbound gravel bikes
Gravel biking, and gravel racing, has firmly entered the mainstream. The registration has elevated at Unbound 200 by over 4000% for the reason that first race however it’s additionally gotten extra severe. The UCI has a gravel world championship, the Life Time Grand Prix is firmly established, and WorldTour riders are common attendees of many gravel races however particularly Unbound. As the game has gotten extra widespread, the racing has gotten extra intense.
The 2006 Unbound 200 race took, as already talked about, 12 hours and 58 minutes. When Ted King gained in 2016, that point had dropped to 10 hours and 42 minutes to cowl a distance of 206 miles at a mean pace of 19.2 mph. In 2022 the gap was 200.2 miles and Ivar Slik completed first with a time of 9 hours and 22 minutes at a mean pace of 21.37 mph. The course modifications yearly so the instances aren’t straight comparable however the pattern is clear.
Coming together with the upper speeds, we have additionally seen continued development of the bike expertise. Within the early years of gravel racing the pattern was to switch cyclocross bikes to make them appropriate for ultra-endurance distances. Then issues received wild for some time with suspension concepts however these bikes are actually basically marketed as ‘journey gravel’ bikes. For gravel race bikes we have come again to slightly-modernised cyclocross bikes as gravel bikes however now the equation has flipped.
Cannondale’s devoted ‘cross bike, the SuperX, is gone. The substitute is the Supersix Evo SE and it is a gravel bike. If you need a cyclocross bike then you definitely purchase the gravel bike however it comes specced with a 1x drivetrain. Cannondale is not alone both, the venerable Specialised Crux morphed from a cyclocross bike to a gravel bike in 2021. When you click on on the top-spec bike on the Specialised cyclocross product web page, the product description begins with “the Crux is the lightest gravel bike on this planet…”
There are additionally a bunch of devoted gravel bikes accessible that do not make any point out of cyclocross. The boys’s 2022 race winner, Ivar Slik, was onboard the Willier Rave SLR which is pretty much as good an instance as any. These bikes are trending nearer to highway bikes however there nonetheless tends to be much less attain, extra stack, a barely slacker entrance finish, and massive tyres. When arrange for racing, riders like Slik are inclined to run highway groupsets which have grown to have as a lot vary as earlier off-road choices. 1x can also be trending in the direction of the journey crowd the place you possibly can nonetheless discover suspension.
