What national champions, WorldTour professionals and Olympic gold medalists rode in the King’s Cup
The King’s Cup Gravel Festival hosted Saturday’s British Gravel Championships on a fast, flat course in the east of England.
After five laps of a 15km King’s Forest circuit, Xan Crees won a sprint finish in the women’s race. Joseph Blackmore beat Ineos Grenadier Connor Swift in another sprint to take the men’s title.
More gravel galacticos, including Alex Dowsett and Alistair Brownlee, graced the Suffolk singletrack.
With the women averaging nearly 30km/h and the men 35km/h for 76km each, the raciest gravel tech was in vogue.
We were on the ground to chat to the riders and photograph their steeds. Here are the best bikes we spotted at the British Gravel Championships.
Sam Culverwell’s Dolan GXC
Sam Culverwell (Dolan Ellesse RT) rode to third place in the senior men’s race onboard this Dolan GXC – the brand’s do-it-all gravel bike.
Culverwell has paired Shimano GRX Di2 shifters with aftermarket Hope RX4+ calipers. With four pistons per caliper (versus the usual two in a stock Shimano caliper), these fetching red stoppers should give him bucketloads of power.
The calipers are matched with Hope RS4 hubs, laced to unidentified Alpina (Dolan’s in-house finishing kit brand) carbon rims. A Hope headset finishes the look.
Culverwell’s bike rolls on a pair of 45mm-wide Vittoria Terreno Dry tyres. These feature an almost slick central section with shallow-profile side knobs – a fast tyre for a dry day.
A Selle Italia Boost saddle sits atop an alloy Alpina seatpost. A slammed Deda stem and semi-compact bars provide a stretched-out cockpit.
Xan Crees’ Cannondale Supersix Evo CX
Xan Crees (Team Spectra Cannondale) won the senior women’s event on board her Supersix Evo CX.
The Supersix Evo CX is Cannondale’s lightweight off-road race bike, designed to take on either cyclocross or gravel racing.
Crees’ build features a SRAM Force rear derailleur and cassettes paired with a Cannondale One crankset. The chain is held in place on the 40t chainring with a neat chain catcher mounted to the front derailleur tab.
The G-One RS tyres have a near-slick file-like tread. The cornering lugs are slightly more pronounced than similar go-fast gravel tyres.
Crees’ fit is less aggressive than typical for a gravel race bike, with little saddle-to-bar drop and a relatively stubby stem.
Alex Dowsett’s Specialized Diverge Expert
Former WorldTour professional Alex Dowsett rode an off-the-peg Specialized Diverge Expert in one of his infrequent forays into gravel racing.
Dowsett’s all-round gravel bike has a fetching light blue colourway with white specks, finished off with his daughter’s stickers.
A 40T single SRAM X-Sync chainring pairs with the brand’s 12-speed NX Eagle 10-50t cassette.
The 13th-placed finisher ran 42c Specialized Pathfinder Pro tubeless tyres with 28psi in the front and 33psi in the back on Roval Terra C carbon wheels.
With only one bottle cage, Dowsett carried a water bladder on his back to stay hydrated in the heat.
At the front end of the bike, a Garmin Edge 1040 is attached to a 3D-printed Silca out-front mount.
The inward-tilted SRAM Rival eTap AXS shifters and long stem indicate the former Hour Record holder still searches for aero advantage.
Bradley Shenton’s Cannondale SuperSix Evo CX
Bradley Shenton is sales and brand manager for Quoc shoes and recently completed Badlands, one of the world’s hardest off-road ultra-endurance races.
He didn’t ride that event on his Cannondale SuperSix Evo CX, saying the setup is too aggressive for 750km in the Spanish outback.
But it was well suited to the King’s Forest, where Shenton finished 18th in the men’s championships.
He used a 42T Ingrid crankset with an 11-speed, 11-42t Shimano GRX cassette.
The purple Hope Union Race clipless pedals perfectly match the colour of the Ingrid cranks.
On the 42cm centre-to-centre Zipp Service Course SL handlebars, which angle inwards, a K-Edge bike computer mount continues the purple theme.
Sparsely treaded 40c Schwalbe G-One Allround gravel tyres are mounted to a Hunt Carbon Gravel Race wheelset.
Cameron Mason’s Specialized S-Works Crux
We’ve covered Cameron Mason’s Specialized S-Works Crux cyclocross bike previously, but this is the 2023 gravel build the Scot rode to fourth in the senior men’s race.
Sprayed bright pink and blue in some of the colours of his Trinity Racing team, the S-Works Crux has a road bike groupset.
Mason has used a 1x SRAM mullet drivetrain for some gravel racing this season. But in anticipation of higher speeds in the King’s Cup, he switched to 48/35T SRAM Force AXS chainrings and a 10-36t cassette.
Some of Mason’s rivals are current or former road professionals and used road bike pedals, which they are more familiar with.
However, Mason comes to gravel racing from an off-road background (he is British National Cyclocross and Cross-country Marathon Mountain Bike champion) and rode Time ATAC XC 12 clipless pedals.
The Specialized-sponsored rider used top-of-the-range Roval Terra CLX wheels and Pathfinder Pro 2Bliss Ready tyres.
Joe Blackmore’s Canyon Inflite CF SL
Joe Blackmore out-kicked Ineos Grenadier Connor Swift in a sprint finish to become men’s British Gravel Champion.
The 20-year-old, who represents Great Britain in cross-country and cyclocross at U23 level, rode an aero-optimised Canyon Inflite CF SL.
The cyclocross bike’s groupset mixes 11-speed, mechanical SRAM Rival components with an aftermarket VXM single, 52T chainring. This is fitted to a well-worn SRAM crankset.
The 40cm Canyon handlebar measures only 36cm between the brake hoods due to their inward angle.
The Team Inspired rider used Cannondale HollowGram 45 Knot SL road bike wheels with 45mm-deep rims. These rolled on 700 x 40c Schwalbe G-One Allround tyres, which proved a popular choice on the Suffolk dirt.
Danielle Shrosbree’s Factor Ostro Gravel
A post-race dust coating didn’t spoil the looks of Danielle Shrosbree’s white Factor Ostro Gravel.
Last year’s champion lost out to Xan Crees in a two-up sprint for the women’s title.
Shrosbree turned the brake hoods slightly inwards on the 38cm-wide, one-piece Black Inc cockpit in a bid to further improve the aerodynamics of the gravel race bike.
The wheels are also from Black Inc, Factor’s in-house components brand, paired with Schwalbe G-One R gravel tyres.
The Amius rider used 48/31T Shimano GRX RX810 chainrings, but said she never left the big ring on the flat terrain.
At the back, an 11-40t cassette rounds off the 11-speed groupset.
A rough weekend at the Raiders gravel event forced Shrosbree to install a fresh bottom bracket an hour and a half before her race.
Jane Barr’s Liv Devote Advanced Pro
Jane Barr, from Velocity 44 RT, completed the women’s podium by winning another sprint for third place.
The Great Britain gravel racer ran just 23psi at the front and 25psi in the rear 700 x 40c Cadex GX tubeless tyres.
She said those pressures weren’t that low for her, but they helped dull vibrations on rougher sections of the course.
The tyres wrapped around Cadex AR 35 gravel wheels on her Liv Devote Advanced Pro, fitted with a 12-speed SRAM Force AXS groupset.
Like many riders, Barr said she remained in the larger of the 43/30T chainrings.
Barr rode Garmin Rally XC200 power meter pedals. But she rarely glanced at the watts displayed on her Wahoo Elemnt Bolt, such was the pace of the racing.
Alistair Brownlee’s BMC Kaius
Double Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee rode his BMC Kaius to ninth place.
He started with a 10-44t SRAM XPLR cassette in an otherwise SRAM Red eTap AXS groupset.
But he finished on a 10-36t cassette after changing his rear wheel following a first-lap puncture.
The Yorkshireman said the 38T single chainring was large enough given the range a 10t smallest cog provides.
On reflection, he said he could have got away with road bike pedals because he rarely unclipped from his Shimano XT SPD pedals.
Brownlee’s Kaius is specced with BMC’s ICS Carbon Aerocockpit, which measures 36cm across the tops and 42cm-wide in the drops.
He switched down from 40c to 38c Continental Terra Speed tyres on Zipp 303S wheels for the day in an attempt to reduce rolling resistance.
Less tyre volume didn’t noticeably decrease the comfort of the 3D-printed Fizik Vento Argo Adaptive saddle, according to Brownlee.
Joe Laverick’s Ribble Gravel SL
Joe Laverick is part of the Ribble Collective, a multi-discipline racing team, and rode the brand’s Gravel SL Pro into 21st place.
The Gravel SL Pro is built around an 11-speed, Shimano GRX Di2 groupset with 48/31T chainrings. His Zipp 303S wheels are clad in 38c Vittoria Terreno Dry tubeless tyres.
The BikeRadar contributor tweaked the build to be as fast as possible in the shortest gravel race he’d ridden this year.
Instead of carrying spares in a saddle bag, he taped gas canisters to the frame and stored tubeless tyre plugs in the bar ends.
To optimise power transfer, Laverick rode Shimano Dura-Ace SPD-SL road pedals.