every episode of this show is now about how Gravel is/isn’t a thing… maybe they should stick to a monthly released show to keep content fresher
Stock-Side-6767 on
It was a wild conjecture about the direction of gravel bikes. They are growing closer to old touring bike, which is great for me.
w1n5t0nM1k3y on
It was such a weird segment. Like they were scrambling for something to talk about because they realized they needed an episode soon and hadn’t prepared anything ahead of time.
The entire premise of the thing was just kind of wrong. Like sure, we’re seeing gravel bikes with bigger tires. But those aren’t the only gravel bikes that exist. There’s still plenty of gravel bikes with 35-40 mm tires. Just looking at Trek, they list the following under “Gravel Bikes” on their website
– Checkpoint – 42mm (max 50mm)
– Domane – 32mm (max 38mm)
– Boone – 32mm (max 38mm)
– Crocket – 32mm (max 38mm)
– FX Sport – 40mm (max 42mm) flat bar
– 1120 – 29×3 inch (not sure max) flat bar
Obviously there are other manufacturers and on some high level elite races you’ll see riders pushing larger tire sizes, but most gravel bikes aren’t anywhere close to 2 inch (50mm) tires yet. I don’t even think there’s a huge market for bikes with 50mm tires because most people don’t want anything that big.
Personally my bike is a Kona Rove with 650×47 tires. That’s probably about as large of a tire as I would want on a gravel bike, and really only accept it because of the 650b tires. Otherwise the tire circumference just starts to get too big if you put such a large tire on 700 rim you run into issue with things like to overlap and trying to get the geometry right especially on smaller frames.
Edit To Add:
The part about Gravel bikes with drop bars being more expensive than hard tails was odd because they slipped in the part about the gravel bike having electronic shifting while the hard tail didn’t and then trying to say that they were similar build spec when the electronic gears probably accounted for a large amount of the price difference.
PowerfulGrowth on
They sort of landed on no things are not about to ungravel. But they made some good points about gravel becoming mtb.
RichyTichyTabby on
Nobody can figure out why bikes meant to be ridden off road are being optimized for off road use.
Aside from actual obstacles, mtb singletrack is smoother than dirt roads, ffs.
Ok-Photo-6302 on
Well it is definitely more fun to ride 1k a bike than to watch other guys masturbate over riding on 10k bikes provided to them by sponsors.
RepulsiveRaisin7 on
GCN slop. Suspension is heavy and makes the bike worse for road riding. You could also argue that hardtails will become extinct once we put suspension on gravel. Never gonna happen.
Stoney3K on
I think at most the whole ‘gravel’ thing is no longer the next hype but it’s just slowly integrating into the landscape of different bikes that are out there.
It’s not like there’s a huge difference between a gravel bike and a regular endurance bike with space for larger tires.
PuzzledActuator1 on
Wider tires are amazing to ride on and they’re a cheap upgrade for a little more comfort offroad. Rarely do I see people out and about with suspension gravel bikes, they’re still on the high end of the price scale, unless that changes it’s not an issue for the majority of people.
Working-Promotion728 on
please advise: is this clickbait to waste 38 minutes of my life (plus ads) or is there something of substance in there?
Glittering-Swim4514 on
Can we ban GCN vids please?
DeficientDefiance on
Global Clickbait Network
Noctifago on
Funny, 10 years ago gravel wasn’t exactly a thing, there was cyclocross and it was its very own beast.
Gravel was…the industry answer to more people wanting to go into cyclocross. But, the thing is, cyclocross has this thing…like a rider technique/skill level gate, and not many people were open to the “getting good at it” part. So gravel bikes main concern was to open this possibility to more and more riders that didn’t have the skill and dexterity to ride cyclocross. Hence the trend for going wider tires, more comfort, suspension, better brakes, etc. Anything perceived as needed for anyone to be reasonably good at gravel riding. It was marketed as a new bike to ride unpaved roads that was faster at it than your xc bike…
Ironic, the gravel bike evolved towards the mtb side of the spectrum instead of the cyclocross side, so now its niche is not as clear as it was in the beginning.
A better title would be, cycling world is unraveling. Pretty much any clear discipline is going, lets say “radder”, more aggressive. Now we have no lack of road bikes that accept wide gravel like tires, they tried to call them “all-road”, said that the geo was redefined. And it all felt like bull. If we use the analogy from the car world, they gave us sport coupes, some crazy people took them and went of road-rally with them so then they gave us suvs, then they tried to sell us in this crossovers that god knows are ugly af. Just to then tell us that the new thing was the latter thing but now with something electronic in it…
In the end you have a dude taking a 90s mtb, putting drop bars and 700c in it, and calling it an x bike. Bicycles have so many styles hahaha
YoghurtDull1466 on
Just let me have my hardtails
Keroshii on
Bikes are just a continuum from road riding through gravel into mtb (xc to dh). There are subsections in each of these categories but for the most part every bike fits on a line of smooth road to technical dh and everything in between. I dont know whh some companies like gcn and the like are so obsessed with trying to put hard limits on these categories. The more bikes that exist the more lines are blurred and thats the fun of it all.
Possible-Bell7699 on
So basically bro is complaining that gravel bikes are becoming better at their intended use? Does he also complain about aero bikes getting lighter?
I think the trends of low-tread mountain bike tires on aero wheels, mullet drivetrains, slight suspension etc. is just making gravel more unique. It takes the best of road and mountain biking and innovates upon that, that’s why we love gravel right? That’s what makes it unique.
So_spoke_the_wizard on
They Si is desperately trying to be controversial without offending anyone. As a result, it just comes off as navel gazing filler.
jesus_chen on
I haven’t watched GCN videos for about 4 years and the last video I saw was literally the same theme.
ElCampesinoGringo on
I hate this channel so much. They say manage to say absolutely nothing in every video
Moof_the_cyclist on
Fun casual bikes don’t win races and despite being what the public needs they are not what the incentives in the bike industry is driven to produce. Eventually gravel will be innovated into being fast capable machines that abandon their original intent and demographic.
mashani9 on
The thing this misses is that not all gravel bikes are going in this direction. There are plenty of them that are still more like road endurance bikes that fit very wide tires. So even if this is “true” for a certain segment who ultimately should have just bought a hard tail because that’s what they really wanted, it’s not for another.
the_jeby on
IMHO gravel is not a bicycle style, it’s a cycling mindset.
22 Comments
every episode of this show is now about how Gravel is/isn’t a thing… maybe they should stick to a monthly released show to keep content fresher
It was a wild conjecture about the direction of gravel bikes. They are growing closer to old touring bike, which is great for me.
It was such a weird segment. Like they were scrambling for something to talk about because they realized they needed an episode soon and hadn’t prepared anything ahead of time.
The entire premise of the thing was just kind of wrong. Like sure, we’re seeing gravel bikes with bigger tires. But those aren’t the only gravel bikes that exist. There’s still plenty of gravel bikes with 35-40 mm tires. Just looking at Trek, they list the following under “Gravel Bikes” on their website
– Checkpoint – 42mm (max 50mm)
– Domane – 32mm (max 38mm)
– Boone – 32mm (max 38mm)
– Crocket – 32mm (max 38mm)
– FX Sport – 40mm (max 42mm) flat bar
– 1120 – 29×3 inch (not sure max) flat bar
Obviously there are other manufacturers and on some high level elite races you’ll see riders pushing larger tire sizes, but most gravel bikes aren’t anywhere close to 2 inch (50mm) tires yet. I don’t even think there’s a huge market for bikes with 50mm tires because most people don’t want anything that big.
Personally my bike is a Kona Rove with 650×47 tires. That’s probably about as large of a tire as I would want on a gravel bike, and really only accept it because of the 650b tires. Otherwise the tire circumference just starts to get too big if you put such a large tire on 700 rim you run into issue with things like to overlap and trying to get the geometry right especially on smaller frames.
Edit To Add:
The part about Gravel bikes with drop bars being more expensive than hard tails was odd because they slipped in the part about the gravel bike having electronic shifting while the hard tail didn’t and then trying to say that they were similar build spec when the electronic gears probably accounted for a large amount of the price difference.
They sort of landed on no things are not about to ungravel. But they made some good points about gravel becoming mtb.
Nobody can figure out why bikes meant to be ridden off road are being optimized for off road use.
Aside from actual obstacles, mtb singletrack is smoother than dirt roads, ffs.
Well it is definitely more fun to ride 1k a bike than to watch other guys masturbate over riding on 10k bikes provided to them by sponsors.
GCN slop. Suspension is heavy and makes the bike worse for road riding. You could also argue that hardtails will become extinct once we put suspension on gravel. Never gonna happen.
I think at most the whole ‘gravel’ thing is no longer the next hype but it’s just slowly integrating into the landscape of different bikes that are out there.
It’s not like there’s a huge difference between a gravel bike and a regular endurance bike with space for larger tires.
Wider tires are amazing to ride on and they’re a cheap upgrade for a little more comfort offroad. Rarely do I see people out and about with suspension gravel bikes, they’re still on the high end of the price scale, unless that changes it’s not an issue for the majority of people.
please advise: is this clickbait to waste 38 minutes of my life (plus ads) or is there something of substance in there?
Can we ban GCN vids please?
Global Clickbait Network
Funny, 10 years ago gravel wasn’t exactly a thing, there was cyclocross and it was its very own beast.
Gravel was…the industry answer to more people wanting to go into cyclocross. But, the thing is, cyclocross has this thing…like a rider technique/skill level gate, and not many people were open to the “getting good at it” part. So gravel bikes main concern was to open this possibility to more and more riders that didn’t have the skill and dexterity to ride cyclocross. Hence the trend for going wider tires, more comfort, suspension, better brakes, etc. Anything perceived as needed for anyone to be reasonably good at gravel riding. It was marketed as a new bike to ride unpaved roads that was faster at it than your xc bike…
Ironic, the gravel bike evolved towards the mtb side of the spectrum instead of the cyclocross side, so now its niche is not as clear as it was in the beginning.
A better title would be, cycling world is unraveling. Pretty much any clear discipline is going, lets say “radder”, more aggressive. Now we have no lack of road bikes that accept wide gravel like tires, they tried to call them “all-road”, said that the geo was redefined. And it all felt like bull. If we use the analogy from the car world, they gave us sport coupes, some crazy people took them and went of road-rally with them so then they gave us suvs, then they tried to sell us in this crossovers that god knows are ugly af. Just to then tell us that the new thing was the latter thing but now with something electronic in it…
In the end you have a dude taking a 90s mtb, putting drop bars and 700c in it, and calling it an x bike. Bicycles have so many styles hahaha
Just let me have my hardtails
Bikes are just a continuum from road riding through gravel into mtb (xc to dh). There are subsections in each of these categories but for the most part every bike fits on a line of smooth road to technical dh and everything in between. I dont know whh some companies like gcn and the like are so obsessed with trying to put hard limits on these categories. The more bikes that exist the more lines are blurred and thats the fun of it all.
So basically bro is complaining that gravel bikes are becoming better at their intended use? Does he also complain about aero bikes getting lighter?
I think the trends of low-tread mountain bike tires on aero wheels, mullet drivetrains, slight suspension etc. is just making gravel more unique. It takes the best of road and mountain biking and innovates upon that, that’s why we love gravel right? That’s what makes it unique.
They Si is desperately trying to be controversial without offending anyone. As a result, it just comes off as navel gazing filler.
I haven’t watched GCN videos for about 4 years and the last video I saw was literally the same theme.
I hate this channel so much. They say manage to say absolutely nothing in every video
Fun casual bikes don’t win races and despite being what the public needs they are not what the incentives in the bike industry is driven to produce. Eventually gravel will be innovated into being fast capable machines that abandon their original intent and demographic.
The thing this misses is that not all gravel bikes are going in this direction. There are plenty of them that are still more like road endurance bikes that fit very wide tires. So even if this is “true” for a certain segment who ultimately should have just bought a hard tail because that’s what they really wanted, it’s not for another.
IMHO gravel is not a bicycle style, it’s a cycling mindset.