Joscha Weber was at the Premiere of the Waltrop Gravel CTF with us. For those who are new to the term CTF, here is a brief explanation: CTF stands for Country Touring. CTF routes mainly run away from tarmac roads and along cycleable field and forest paths. A mountain bike, cross bike, trekking bike or even a gravel bike is recommended. As with an RTF (cycle tour), there is no timekeeping and no rankings.
Before the start of the CTF
Now Jana Görges and Tilo Butermann are getting a bit hectic after all. They hastily put on their overshoes, get out their gloves and look for their helmets in the car. After all, they don't want to be the last ones out on the course. The couple from Essen actually wanted to be there earlier, but the wrong road was initially entered in the sat nav. "We weren't quite awake yet, I don't think," says Jana Görges and laughs. She is a little nervous, she says, because all of this is still new to her. The 35-year-old has only recently started cycling and has already lost her heart to gravel. "My fiancé got me hooked. At first I had a second-hand racing bike, but there was always something wrong with it. Then he surprised me with a beautiful gravel bike and we've been riding together ever since," she says, zipping up her rather stylish flannel shirt jersey and pushing her bright turquoise bike to the start in the schoolyard of the Städtische Realschule Waltrop.
There, 3G proofs are being checked at bar tables and registration forms are being distributed. That makes the RC Sprinter Waltrop The president himself. Wolfgang Kolacya's glasses over his FFP2 mask fog up so much that he has to take them off. Even at a fresh seven degrees on this November morning, he is sweating because the rush in front of his table is never-ending.
Jump on the bandwagon with the Gravel CTF
More and more cyclists turn into the schoolyard, and Kolacya patiently explains the procedure each time. "I didn't expect it to be so popular. That's all right," he says in his best Ruhr German. To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Sprinter Waltrop wanted to do something special and came up with Gravel, not without ulterior motives: "We want to jump on the bandwagon. That's what you hear in the scene: More and more people are switching from road bikes to gravel bikes. It's clear: you can ride on gravel paths, the tyres are wider and a bit more comfortable. You don't need 10 bar in your tyres any more," says the president, as more riders from the country tour ride, an off-road tour, stream into the schoolyard. Kolacya pauses briefly and looks after them. Then he is certain: "Gravel will be the future, and we on the board agree on that."
Gravel is the trend
The Waltrop club board is not alone in this opinion. The cycling scene is changing, Gravel grows and grows. The wide-tyred all-rounder is becoming increasingly popular; beginners appreciate its comfort, frequent riders its versatility, commuters its sporty robustness, and some professionals are completely rediscovering their sport on a gravel bike. The industry has long since realised this. Five years ago, the mail order company Rose introduced gravel bikes, which now account for 15 per cent of all bikes sold. "Gravel is going through the roof, the bikes are being snatched out of our hands," reports Rose spokeswoman Sarah Terweh. While Germany-wide sales figures have not yet been determined according to the Zweirad-Industrie-Verband, figures from other manufacturers confirm the trend. Every third Canyon road bike sold is now a gravel bike, and the trend is rising: gravel bike sales have tripled at the Koblenz-based company in the past three years. The picture is similar at Focus: every second bike sold in the road bike segment is a gravel bike - even though Focus has only been offering gravel bikes since the beginning of 2021. The figures point in one direction: the future really could belong to the gravel bike.
Behind the scenes of the cycling event
In Waltrop, this future starts with a lot of work. In the days leading up to the event, the organising team put up more than 500 yellow signposts along the route, significantly more than for the usual road RTF. There are simply more turn-offs in the forest and off-road. But the team masters the task expertly, and the Waltrop-based team has been organising the event at regular intervals since 2006. Country tour. For an entry fee of just five euros, there are three refreshment stations and plenty of Ruhr Valley hospitality. For example from Petra Wendt. She hands out waffles, bananas, bars and drinks, especially steaming ones, at the first station after just 20 kilometres. "We serve hot broth and warm tea. It warms everyone's heart again," she says in a good mood and supplies the next cyclists. "But I think everyone here likes the mud and the winter." With 60 volunteers and a great deal of commitment, the Waltrop-based team organises its gravel CTF and even offers a guided children's tour on the short 36 km route. And nobody will go hungry on this day: 20 home-baked cakes, countless home-made sandwiches and sausages from the barbecue await the 358 starters at the finish line.
Gravel and club sport - does that work?
For some, all of this - the cosy, folksy feel of the RTF and CTF, the club life, the recording of points on scorecards - is considered difficult to reconcile with the idea of gravel biking, which actually wants something completely different. Thorben Haushahn is not sure whether gravel and the CTF really go together. For him, gravel is different, something new. "Graveling is a movement. The spirit of Gravel is special. We live inclusion, everyone can be part of it, we are open to all and everyone", says the 34-year-old amateur cyclist. He is the newly appointed "BDR expert" for gravel and something like the personified attempt of the German Cycling Federation to become part of the trend. Thorben Haushahn is a face from the scene who raves about the wild and long events in the USA, who is bursting with ideas, like Grave events could change the sport of cycling. Not all thoughts are really structured. But that's not what the online marketing specialist from Berlin is all about - he wants to get things moving.
Rigid rules in club sport versus young, casual, cool
"Gravel is young, casual, cool. That's why not everyone who is 60 plus can simply organise a Gravelevent. It doesn't make sense to have a meeting or organising team of only white, old men. We want to be diverse," he demands. He would like to replace the word "everyone" as "no longer up to date". The concept of cycling events is also far too rigid in Germany, and it is particularly important for gravel cycling that there are as few rules as possible. He does not want to have a discussion about minimum or maximum tyre widths. It seems clear that some of the ideas he wants to present to the committees of the German Cyclists' Association will cause offence.
Welcoming culture
But if you take the inclusive idea of open gravel sport a step further, the good old CTF and gravel racing could fit together again. Because everyone is welcome here and every bike. In a wooded area near the Dortmund-Ems Canal, we pass a rather colourful mix of groups. Older, younger, women, men. Dressed hip and smart or in a club jersey from the decade before last. Some on mountain bikes, a few on crossers, a few on trekking bikes, many on gravel bikes. The tyres range from narrow and barely profiled to wide and chunky. Everything is there - and nobody gives the impression that they feel underchallenged or out of place on the technically easy route, which is closely modelled on the previous CTF.
We meet Jana Görges and Tilo Butermann again on the climb up to a green slag heap. Their bikes could have come from the latest gravel bike test, state-of-the-art material, some lightweight construction. Plus clothes that could easily adorn a photo shoot for a top brand. "Cycling actually defines our whole day alongside work," says Jana with a laugh. "There are cycling magazines on our breakfast table and we're always ordering something for the hobby." The couple epitomise the gravel boom pretty well. Also because they like individualism, the "gravel lifestyle". "We recently founded our own small club because we thought we might be offending the very traditional racing bike world. It was just a whim," says her fiancé Tilo, 43, a property portfolio manager. But the somewhat dusty CTF also has its charm. "We think it's great that the traditional clubs are also opening up to gravel. It absolutely works, at least for us." Then they both want to continue, back down towards the canal.
Along the waterways north of Dortmund, the odd power station adorns the horizon as an authentic backdrop to the Ruhr region. In reality, however, the route of the Waltrop CTF leads mainly through nature: floodplains, forests, fields and a few tranquil suburbs of the Ruhr Valley make the trip to Waltrop an unforgettable experience. unexpectedly green adventure. And the renaturalised slag heaps, such as the one at the Waltrop colliery, open up beautiful perspectives of a region in transition.
The ancestors of the gravel trend
Günther Kämper knows many of the routes here and lives just a few kilometres away. He rides a lot on the roads between the Ruhr area and Münsterland, and now increasingly also off-road. Why is that? "The thicker tyres provide more traction and are simply more fun. And you ride with more comfort. In summer, I have my regular road bike laps. With the gravel bike, I can simply explore new routes and don't have to worry about getting stuck." For him, the gravel bike, which in his case is a converted cross bike, is "the all-rounder". But - and he emphasises this in a calm Westphalian voice - it's not all that new. CTFs in particular have always been big here in the region, even before the gravel boom. "We used to ride mountain bikes and crossers, that worked too," he remembers. "Now you see more and more gravel bikes. There's a lot of trend there. People are buying them because that's what the market wants, well," he says, shrugs and rolls off.
