Our pick of the bike and component choices from Leuven
Since their inauguration in 2022, the UCI’s Gravel World Championships have become progressively more ‘gravelly’.
Each year also brings some fascinating bike and component choices for us to marvel at and unpack.
So, with Marianne Vos and Mathieu van der Poel crowned the winners, here are the tech trends we spotted at the 2024 event.
New bikes from Superior and Lapierre
Superior is a brand that will be new to many people, but it used the event, for which it is a sponsor, to tease its 2025 gravel race bike.
This special-edition bike, with a top-spec SRAM Red AXS XPLR build, was on display and the brand was more than happy to chat about specifics.
The new frameset, for example, uses a SRAM Universal Derailleur Hanger, has mounts for a front derailleur and is compatible with full gravel mudguards.
Superior has carried the ONE Carbon Integrated Cockpit ICR over from the previous-generation bike, but there’s now a smartly integrated rear light at the seatpost.
The new bike also features 5mm of extra tyre clearance, with the frameset now allowing for up to 45mm gravel tyres. Despite the extra space, Superior claims the bike weighs 7.4kg in a medium size.
I was fortunate to have time for a short ride aboard the XR GR, so watch out for a first-ride review when the bike launches in February 2025.
Lapierre, meanwhile, is an established brand with a love of interesting seatstay junctions.
It’s hardly a surprise to see, then, that the new bike – which looks very close to being production-ready – features seatstays that extend past the seat tube, joining the frame a few centimetres along the top tube.
This bike belonged to an unidentified FDJ–Suez rider, who helpfully displayed the bike’s compatibility with gravel dropper posts and suspension forks by using both.
The 45mm Schwalbe G-One RS tyres also gave away a key detail of the frameset. The tyres looked to be running very close to the chainstays, suggesting this is at the upper end of what the bike can take.
With the long, loping seatstays and a heavily sloping top tube, the bike may look longer than it is, but we’ll have to wait for full details from Lapierre before we draw any conclusions about the geometry.
It’s becoming a gravel race
There are a lot of topics over which fans and weary tech writers can chew the fat after a weekend of UCI gravel racing. The chief of these is simple: is this a gravel race?
You can point to the road bikes still present on the start line – some riders on the TDT–Unibet team used Cannondale SuperSix road bikes. However, when I queried this with the team’s mechanic, the choice transpired to be one born of simple necessity.
One person not struggling for bikes at his disposal is Mathieu van der Poel. The Dutchman now has rainbow jerseys in road, cyclocross and gravel, with the latter taken aboard a custom Canyon Grail CFR.
Van der Poel said the course used this weekend featured more technical sections than the 2022 edition in which he finished third, making the choice to pick the Grail a simple one. However, equally, you can argue that road bikes are perfectly capable of traversing princess gravel.
Still, though, the tech on display suggests the World Championships is becoming more of a true gravel race each year.
Size quandaries
As I sat on Friday evening, partaking in a number of the local Belgian tipples, a question was asked: if you were a WorldTour pro, what tyre size would you use for the weekend’s racing?
Being completely useless on this subject, I listened to the riders who had ridden the course that day and their answers ranged from 36-40mm. As it turned out, Quick-Step’s American sprinter, Luke Lamperti, was asking the advice of his former Trinity Racing mechanic Aaron McCann.
In the end, he settled on 32mm, at 32psi, with no inserts.
The rider on everyone’s lips, however, was van der Poel. This isn’t the former world champion’s first dabble with gravel, having ridden the inaugural event in 2022. His choice of Canyon’s Ultimate CFR road bike that day led to most of those arguments above.
He turned up to 2022’s race with 34mm tyres, but this year the course seemed to demand more, and Van der Poel started on 38mm Vittoria Terreno Zero tyres, the brand’s slickest gravel offering.
The Alpecin mechanic told me his pressure was a whopping 50psi and he never runs inserts.
Connor Swift, meanwhile, opted for 40mm Continental Terra Speed TR with inserts.
Repair minimalism
When riders of Kopecky and Van der Poel’s standard rock up to a gravel race, you can rely on a high average speed. As a result of this and the privateer nature of gravel, there isn’t much hope of seeing the front again if you suffer a mechanical.
As a result, riders opted for quickly deployable and rather basic repair solutions.
We saw countless Dynaplug tools, along with more C02 canisters taped to seatposts than you could shake a gravelly stick at.
My favourite solution, although admittedly not the tidiest, was the collection of canisters taped to the seatpost of UAE Team Emirates' Isaac del Toro.
Fellow Colnago-sponsored rider, Nathan Haas, had been put in charge of preparing del Toro’s bike and it looks as though Hass got wonderfully carried away with the electrical tape.
Other riders, such as Britain’s Will Truelove of the Thriva-SRCT team, used repair canisters. This one is Muc-Off’s BAM! kit and Truelove has used a Velcro strap to keep things tidy.
Suspension not needed
Count on one hand the number of suspension forks and dropper posts on display and you’d have had fingers to spare.
Most riders opted for the simplest, lightest setup possible, but that didn’t stop a rider from FDJ-Suez running both.
Another notable rider opting for a dropper was last year’s winner, Matej Mohoric. The Slovenian used a Fox Transfer SL Performance Elite with a Pro lever mounted to the left handlebar drop.
When we asked Mohoric where he might be deploying the dropper, he was quick to tell us that every corner would see the saddle lowered.
In the end, Vos out-sprinted Lotte Kopecky aboard a Cervélo equipped with the new Gravaa KAPS system. Van der Poel, meanwhile, had time to hold his Canyon Grail CFR aloft as the sun set in Leuven.