Is it because of the term that gravel bikes are so difficult to grasp? After all, road bikes that can be ridden on gravel have been around for decades. They are called cross bikes and are a firm fixture on the road bike market, although they are quite manageable in terms of sales figures. Some sceptics therefore believe that the hype surrounding gravel bikes is simply an attempt by bike manufacturers to sell old wine in new bottles.
But the new breed should not be taken quite so lightly. Cross bikes are first and foremost sports equipment for a very specialised form of cycling race in which riders have to battle for an hour at the limit with changing surfaces and chicanes that sometimes even force them to dismount and shoulder the bike. Question for all cross bike owners: How often have you jogged through the forest with your bike on your shoulder in recent years? Probably not too often.
Gravel bikes address precisely this contradiction. Many manufacturers interpret the new category as a universally usable intermediate between a classic competition crosser and a road bike. Typical features include disc brakes, wide but not overly profiled tyres, a wide range of gear ratios, a moderate riding position suitable for touring and a slightly longer wheelbase. Mudguards can also be easily retrofitted to many gravel bikes. The bikes are therefore better suited to the typical activities of most amateur cyclists than the purist cross racers, only a tiny proportion of which ever see a race track. Most of them are used more as robust training equipment for the flying change between road, forest and dirt tracks.
Basically, the gravel bike is to the cross bike as the marathon racing bike is to the competition-orientated road bike. Here too, the manufacturers realised at some point that they were producing their bikes without the majority of the target group in mind. The initial criticism that marathon racers are not real racing bikes has long since fallen silent and the category is now an integral part of the market. If bike manufacturers have their way, gravel bikes will now repeat this success story.
You can find the entire test and the test results for these models as a PDF in the download area below:
- Giant TCX Advanced SX (Gravel) vs Giant TCX Advanced Pro 2 (Cross)
- Ridley X-Trail (Gravel) against Ridley X-Night SL (Cross)
- Rose Xeon CDX Gravel 3000 (Gravel) vs Rose Xeon CDX Cross 4400 (Cross)
- Specialized Diverge Comp (Gravel) vs Specialized Crux Elite (Cross)
