Lol, no. Wishful thinking. It’s very likely (almost guaranteed) that pro gravel will continue to grow *relative to its current footprint* but “the future of bike racing” reads like deliberate clickbait. Perusing the article’s contents supports this.
CafeVelo on
When the biggest names in the sport say they don’t care much about gravel *while they’re at the world championships* I don’t think the future of bike racing is there. The pros don’t care, the global fan base doesn’t care, the structure of the sport doesn’t care. It’s just Americans doing this parallel thing separate of the rest of the sporting world. Recreational people buy gravel stuff and the companies that make it sometimes send their athletes to do it but that’s mostly the only crossover until pros retire and do a sunset tour in gravel.
It’s an avenue to race bikes because there’s money available for elites. When that interest dries up it will fold or align with something else. I do think it’s a popular recreational format though. I doubt amateur gravel riding is going anywhere unless it keeps changing and they just call it marathon mountain biking.
Thenlockmeup on
Dust
yetanothertodd on
Just the opposite, I think pro gravel racing has peaked.
Original-One-3302 on
This is more of an entertainment piece rather than an informative or facts based one and I think it missed one key argument: Road use permits are getting much harder and expensive to get than they used to be. That is one of the main reasons road racing is disappearing in some countries.
If this trend continues, road races will become increasingly more harder to reach to smaller teams or even for all teams outside the UCI sanctioned realm with the big budgets (even UCI continental teams require a lot of cash to survive).
This is of course, much worse for stage races which are almost dead in the US.
7 Comments
No
Lol, no. Wishful thinking. It’s very likely (almost guaranteed) that pro gravel will continue to grow *relative to its current footprint* but “the future of bike racing” reads like deliberate clickbait. Perusing the article’s contents supports this.
When the biggest names in the sport say they don’t care much about gravel *while they’re at the world championships* I don’t think the future of bike racing is there. The pros don’t care, the global fan base doesn’t care, the structure of the sport doesn’t care. It’s just Americans doing this parallel thing separate of the rest of the sporting world. Recreational people buy gravel stuff and the companies that make it sometimes send their athletes to do it but that’s mostly the only crossover until pros retire and do a sunset tour in gravel.
It’s an avenue to race bikes because there’s money available for elites. When that interest dries up it will fold or align with something else. I do think it’s a popular recreational format though. I doubt amateur gravel riding is going anywhere unless it keeps changing and they just call it marathon mountain biking.
Dust
Just the opposite, I think pro gravel racing has peaked.
This is more of an entertainment piece rather than an informative or facts based one and I think it missed one key argument: Road use permits are getting much harder and expensive to get than they used to be. That is one of the main reasons road racing is disappearing in some countries.
If this trend continues, road races will become increasingly more harder to reach to smaller teams or even for all teams outside the UCI sanctioned realm with the big budgets (even UCI continental teams require a lot of cash to survive).
This is of course, much worse for stage races which are almost dead in the US.
In the United States, probably.
In the rest of the world, no.