Unless you’ve been dwelling beneath a rock, or you’re new to gravel as a biking style, you’ll have come throughout the time period ‘Spirit of Gravel’ earlier than. It’s laborious to overlook – a phrase used liberally by these within the biking media – however finds its biggest use amongst entrepreneurs and influencers. It can also be a kind of phrases that may seemingly imply all issues to all individuals.
To some, simply driving a gravel bike is the Spirit of Gravel (henceforth abbreviated to ‘SoG’). To others it’s bikepacking. To some, it’s strategically underbiking, which oddly would then make Paris-Roubaix SoG. It’s neighborhood, it’s tenting, it’s 90’s mountain bikes, it’s friction shifting, it’s extremely racing, it’s bike touring, however above all, it’s essentially anti-mainstream.
The thread linking each point out of SoG is a railing towards the established order, whether or not it’s a model telling you that its new bike-packing bag will imbue you with an unbiased spirit, or the arms race of gravel and extremely occasions turning into ever harder, distant, and customarily disagreeable in an try to out-SoG one another, it’s all a play to make you’re feeling cool, and principally not-a-roadie.
How has the Spirit of Gravel modified?
I’m afraid if anybody is labouring beneath the misapprehension that gravel remains to be underground I have to burst that bubble. From a industrial standpoint gravel is the most important section for thus many manufacturers that I converse to, and even smaller gravel occasions now are attended by numbers orders of magnitude bigger than even the most important occasions had years in the past.
Unbound, again when it was nonetheless sadly named ‘Dirty Kanza’, is the top of the gravel race scene however again in 2006 it was attended by 36 riders. You get greater than that on my native membership’s Monday night time gravel experience! Hell, even the Tour de France has a gravel stage this yr.
With the recognition of gravel now, the SoG has morphed from simply ‘driving drop bars off street’, which was itself a countercultural exercise almost 20 years in the past, and migrated in the direction of the fringes and the extremes. Unsupported gravel and extremely races push the envelope – see Unbound XL, an try to carry the SoG again to Unbound – and are themselves removed from the mainstream by their twin virtues of being extremely tough, and close to unimaginable to comply with past what is obtainable by watching a dot transfer on a map.
Ultra racing and bikepacking go hand in hand, and whereas extremely racing retains the aggressive ember burning, bikepacking is the center and soul of so many advertising departments in the intervening time. In a lot the identical means as big SUVs are offered in America to free-spirited offroaders, solely to spend all their time in visitors on a freeway, gravel bikes are offered on their means to mean you can go tenting by bike, solely to be ridden down three or 4 sections of bridleway as soon as per week. This is the place the SoG has bedded in, however issues are altering because of the proliferation of professional racing.
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Pro racing and the Spirit of Gravel
Nothing rustles the gravelly feathers fairly just like the pro-ification of gravel. Gravel racing got here beneath the SoG umbrella for years, and whereas there was competitors, you’d have been a pariah in the event you turned up in aero socks.
Aero will not be SoG. We’ve seen gravel racing creep from the addition and debate on aero bars, by means of to totally fledged race sequence, and even the involvement of the UCI and a rainbow jersey for the gravel world champion, up to now virtually solely received by street riders, with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot the exception as a predominantly cyclo-cross/MTB rider.
Pro roadies now frequently rock up on the greatest gravel races, and whereas for a couple of years, the gravel race scene was partially akin to a retirement tour for some execs, like Messi going to Inter Miami or Ronaldo to Al-Nassr, it now very a lot has its personal superstars.
Gravel racing is what we report most on right here at Cyclingnews, and that does considerably skew my notion, however by way of the best way gravel races and gravel tech drive clicks, I’m fairly assured in saying it’s the principle pillar of the gravel world now.
Participation in gravel occasions provides us an opportunity to experience the identical programs as the professionals, typically on the identical time, or not less than on the identical day. This absolutely goes to erode the SoG, then? Nope. I believe the extra professional gravel turns into, the stronger the SoG turns into all over the place else.
Make gravel underground once more
There was a hazard for a time of gravel turning into uncool. Pro racing, bickering over aerobars and hydration backpacks… it wasn’t a superb look when it was talked about in the identical breath as your native Saturday grav tour.
Now I believe professional gravel racing has develop into so siloed, and so widespread, that the remainder of gravel is turning into much less mainstream once more consequently, or not less than is perceived as such – gross sales figures of gravel bikes could barely burst this argument.
Regardless, the extra ‘gravel’ turns into synonymous with the mass begin, marginal positive aspects, tyre strain obsessing, and carbs per hour, the extra the remainder of us – myself very a lot included on this – get to really feel cool once more. It additionally means we get to cherry-pick from the most effective new tech too, as a wholesome race scene means higher bikes.
We have seen this playbook earlier than on this planet of mountain biking. It was initially this underground factor happening in Marin County, earlier than exploding in recognition, growing a race scene, which then slowly diverged away. I’m not a mountain biker, however the majority of these I do know establish way more with the rad, non-racing sort of MTB than they do with superlight short-track XC driving.
With yearly that passes, gravel racing is turning into a extra established, extra legit nook of our sport, and on the identical time, the remainder of us are extra at liberty to get pleasure from simply driving gravel bikes nevertheless we like.
Gravel, and biking itself, will come full circle
I could have come throughout a little bit anti-SoG right here, however that’s to a point as a result of I’m making an attempt to come back down on one facet of the fence for the avoidance of ambiguity. I’m truly barely obsessive about my very own model of SoG, which for me started with the inception of the Rough Stuff Fellowship in a pub in 1955 in Herefordshire, simply to the English facet of the England-Wales border.
For these of you unaware, the historical past of the Rough Stuff Fellowship is basically driving (with a variety of pushing) regular bikes off-road. There’s an intrepid spirit, together with sturdy knitwear, heavy bikes, and a variety of tea and fish finger sandwiches cooked on a camp range.
It started on the introduction of mass-participation biking in Britain, earlier than any actual splitting into the genres we have now right now. It’s the oldest off-road biking membership on this planet, and it has remained lively regardless of roadies, mountain bikers, and gravel riders calving off into distinct teams.
Gravel, although, feels probably the most just like the ethos of the Rough Stuff Fellowship; a sort of bloody-minded, strategic underbiking. As professional gravelling grows, the remainder of us could properly revert again to this sort of driving, or could already be doing so. We’ve simply received to recollect to maintain doing it after the advertising departments have moved on to different issues.