Horse for the Course: Gravel or MTB for the 613km Torino-Nice Rally?

By Katherine Moore

Published: Sunday, 21 November 2021 at 12:00 am

When faced with the prospect of riding the first-ever Women’s Torino-Nice Rally, my mind quickly turned to my equipment. What would provide the combination of comfort and capability required for a bikepacking ride covering more than 600km over road cols and military gravel roads in the high Alps?

Drop-bar or flat-bar? Rigid frame or suspension? Gravel bike or mountain bike? The Torino-Nice Rally is a ride like no other, but what was the best tool for the job?

Introducing the first Women’s Torino-Nice Rally

"Start
While 21 of us started in Turin, a few more joined along the way to boost the crew to 28 riders.
Tristan Bogaard

If you haven’t heard of the Torino-Nice Rally before, then you’re in for a real treat (as was I). Several friends had completed the course in previous years and touted it as the best bikepacking route they’d ever ridden. They were not wrong.

The event was established in 2015 by James Olsen with an aim of exploring parts of the Alps often missed by riders, linking dirt tracks and high cols to valleys and towns for resupply points.

It also runs in support of the Smart Shelter Foundation: a charity that creates building manuals and constructs earthquake-resistant buildings such as schools, homes and hostels in high-risk areas such as Nepal.

Although you can take on the route at any time (outside of winter), the Rally itself is an annual event held in early September. Komoot came on board as a title sponsor of the annual event in 2021, with revised route options due to the devastation caused in and around the Roya Valley in October 2020 by Storm Alex.

Riders can enter the ballot by sending founder Olsen a postcard (cute), while women are automatically guaranteed a place in an initiative designed to increase participation. Bravo, TNR team.

This year, the first Women’s Torino-Nice Rally came about in a fabulously spontaneous last-minute fashion when ultra-endurance frontwoman Lael Wilcox put the idea of a mass women’s start to Gaby Thompson, Komoot’s global community manager.

The rest is history. Fast forward just a matter of weeks and there were some 28 women aged 22 to 54 gathered in the mountains, having travelled from across Europe and North America to tackle the ride together.

Katherine’s Komoot Women’s Torino-Nice Rally

The horse: The new Juliana Wilder, a 120/115mm downcountry full-suspension mountain bike, with a few modifications for the Torino-Nice Rally, including more durable, fast-rolling tyres, a standard seatpost in place of a dropper, and ergonomic grips with integrated bar ends. All loaded up with bikepacking bags, of course.

The course: The Torino-Nice Rally: more than 600 kilometres from Turin in Italy to the south coast of France at Nice, including both road cols and high-altitude gravel military roads. There are 10 major cols along the way, topping out with the 2,744-metre Col Agnel on the French/Italian border.

The goal: Survival? To ride the full route within eight days, as part of the Komoot Women’s edition alongside 28 badass women from across the globe, including instigator Lael Wilcox and her wife Rue, Emily Chappell and countless other inspiring endurance riders and racers.

620km, 10 cols and some of Europe’s best high-Alpine riding

"Col
The spectacular climb of the Col Agnel in autumn featured a sprinkling of snow.
Bicycle Factory

The Torino-Nice Rally typically provides a choice of route options but, for the purposes of this ride and to keep everyone on the same trail, a single route was chosen, avoiding the very highest Alpine passes in case of early-season snowfall.

Still, this course posed some 620km (385 miles) of riding, with 15,800m (51,837ft) of climbing over no fewer than 10 cols, including the paved Col d’Izoard, Col Agnel and Col de Turini, as well as the off-road Colle del Colombardo, Colle delle Finestre, Gardetta Pass and Colle di Tenda.

"Col
The Torino-Nice Rally zig-zags over the French/Italian border several times, most notably here at the Col Agnel.
Bicycle Factory

We’d planned to ride it in just over a week, with a finishers’ party of sorts held at The Service Course in Nice on the afternoon of the eighth day.

Zig-zagging over the French/Italian border, the Torino-Nice Rally also takes in some of the most spectacular high Alpine military and gravel balcony roads, including the Strada dell’Assietta, Strada dei Cannoni and astoundingly beautiful ‘Little Peru’.

"Strada
The rough and rugged Strada Cannoni is an incredible reward at the top of the Colle di Sempeyre.
Katherine Moore

Intended as a self-supported bikepacking challenge, the ethos of the Torino-Nice Rally is a refreshingly human one: “(Don’t) get hung up on purity of style, unwritten rules of self-supported racing or any other stuff like that. If offered a 3-course meal sharing a 3-litre bottle of red, you’d take it, right?”