As SRAM makes strides, Shimano is dragging its heels
As far as I can tell, Shimano doesn’t care much for elite gravel racing.
This is odd because, with one of cycling’s brightest stars winning the rainbow jersey in the elite men’s UCI Gravel World Championships last weekend, it feels as if gravel racing is truly going mainstream.
Given the backing gravel has received from punters and brands alike in recent years – our buyer’s guide to the best gravel bikes is one of our most consistently popular pages, for example – it’s perhaps no surprise.
But despite all this, I can’t shake the feeling that cycling’s biggest component brand doesn’t seem all that fussed about it.
Three gravel world champions, no GRX
Shimano doesn’t ignore gravel completely, of course. It produces a range of GRX gravel groupsets and wheelsets, for example, plus extras such as gravel-specific components, shoes and riding kit.
It also looks as if drop-bar Shimano Cues groupsets (which leaked last month) may be about to shake up the lower end of the gravel bike market.
Compared to its chief rival SRAM, and its host of subsidiary brands such as Zipp and RockShox, though, Shimano’s gravel offering is fairly limited in scope and stops curiously short of the high-end.
As a result, while all three elite men’s UCI Gravel World Championships have been won using Shimano-equipped bikes, none have featured Shimano’s gravel-specific offerings.
The 2024 winner, Mathieu van der Poel, opted for a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 R9200 groupset – the Japanese brand’s flagship electronic road bike groupset – as did 2023 winner Matej Mohorič and the discipline’s inaugural champion, Gianni Vermeersch.
All three riders also opted for Shimano’s Dura-Ace SPD-SL road pedals, rather than its SPD-compatible gravel pedals (although that perhaps says more about the demands – or lack thereof – of the parcours on offer at such events).
I have my suspicions about why this could be happening.
In terms of materials, weight and finish, GRX tops out at roughly the same level as Ultegra Di2 (its second-tier road groupset), and is missing a number of key racing-focused options, such as bigger chainrings and a power meter crankset.
Given this, there are – as far as I can see – two possible explanations for why Shimano’s elite athletes mostly shun GRX.
Either they don’t think it offers what they want, or, worse, they don’t think it’s good enough.
Why is there no Dura-Ace GRX?
When it comes to road and gravel bike tech, Shimano has previously introduced new technologies at the Ultegra-level, later releasing a Dura-Ace equivalent once the tech has been suitably refined.
Its first attempt at a hydraulic disc brake system for road bikes (the BR-R785 road hydraulic disc brakes) was released in 2013 as non-series components pitched at the Ultegra-level, for example. This tech eventually made its way to the Dura-Ace level in 2017 with the launch of the R9100 series groupsets.
Likewise, when the first-generation Shimano GRX groupsets launched in 2019, they appeared to be following a similar pattern. The range started with Tiagra-level RX400 parts, then topped out with Ultegra-equivalent RX800 components.
Far from getting a Dura-Ace-level GRX groupset, though, the recent update to GRX Di2 amounted to little more than an extra cog at the rear and a subtle reshaping of the brake hoods (so far, anyway – we’re still waiting for 1x GRX Di2 groupsets to launch, so perhaps there’s more to come).
In contrast, SRAM’s new Red XPLR AXS gravel groupset shook up the formula far more aggressively, with a Universal Derailleur Hanger interface, 13 speeds and 1x-specific formulation.
Of course, we’ve yet to test Shimano GRX Di2 RX825, so perhaps I’m jumping the gun on that one, but it’s not only with groupsets that Shimano’s gravel racing kit lags behind its rivals.
Compared to Zipp’s range of highly progressive wheelsets, for example, Shimano’s top-tier gravel wheels, the GRX WH-RX880s, are competitively light but have relatively shallow and narrow rim dimensions that put them well behind the curve of modern trends in gravel wheels.
It’s fair to say Shimano has rarely pushed the limits of design when it comes to making wheels for any discipline, but the contrast between these and Zipp’s new 303 XPLR SW wheelset (which was used by Formula One driver turned gravel enthusiast Valtteri Bottas and many other SRAM-sponsored athletes at the Gravel World Championships) is stark.
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Van Der Poel didn’t opt to use the WH-RX880s.
Could van der Poel’s unbranded deep-section carbon rims (which were, according to our man on the ground, Liam Cahill, laced to Shimano Dura-Ace hubs) be our first look at something more progressive from Shimano? Let’s hope so.
After all, it’s great that Shimano has focused its attention on serving the cheaper end of the gravel market during gravel’s initial explosion in popularity, given that stuff is what most of us can actually afford. It’s certainly what’s on my own gravel bike.
But Shimano shouldn’t take the flagship stuff for granted because that’s what often gets people excited about a brand, even if they can’t buy into that tech until it eventually trickles down to more affordable levels.
Shimano is missing the chance of a lifetime
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it won’t have escaped your notice that Mathieu van der Poel is one of the sport’s biggest names.
A world champion cyclist across multiple disciplines, van der Poel has taken the cycling world by storm in recent years.
Having him on the start line of events, let alone adding his name to the list of winners, will do much to raise the profile and burnish the reputation of gravel racing.
If van der Poel is to race more gravel events next year, though – as you’d hope the reigning UCI world champion would – Shimano will be missing an enormous opportunity to market its gravel-specific equipment.
SRAM, in contrast, has a comparatively wide range of flagship components to deck out its star riders, such as Marianne Vos (who won this year’s elite women’s race), Kasia Niewiadoma and Tiffany Cromwell.
With the discipline’s rapidly rising popularity, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see other big names riding for Shimano-sponsored teams – perhaps luminaries such as Tadej Pogaçar or Tom Pidcock – getting involved.
And if Shimano can’t capitalise on this momentum, it risks losing the gravel tech arms race before it has even begun.