UCI Gravel Championships Streaming

[fourflys]

great discussion on the gravel worlds course on the latest GCN Show video.. Si makes some great points on why the course was harder than some folks (myself included) gave it credit for.. and he actually rode the race, so..

I take back my negative comments..

[Tychom]

I do notice this on US-centric forums that there's an expectation that gravel actually means gravel, that gravel bikes are to be used on gravel roads, and even that gravel bikes aren't even necessary - because gravel roads are pristine and can be ridden on road bikes.

Which is of course, all highly dependent on your view point and largely derived I imagine from where you live and ride.

As someone living not all that far away (relatively) from this race location what gravel means to me is certainly very different to someone living in some parts of the US. I've caught clips of the race and my take away from it is yeah, that looks a lot like my gravel rides (albeit a lot faster).

Here (and generally speaking, that' a lot of northern & central Europe) 'gravel' just means using your gravel bike on anything that you once used your cyclocross bike on - easy single track, unpaved canal sides, pave, hard-pack and forest roads, unpaved farm roads and even - yes - some gravel. For a lot of the year this can mean some very muddy rides.

A lot of Europe doesn't have large and well-tended networks of gravel roads and so the expectation of what a gravel ride entails varies greatly. This isn't necessarily a euro-centric view either - the same can be said for lots of other parts of the world too where either due to population density or geography little of such networks exist.

So maybe I can see what the UCI is aiming at, I dunno. Maybe they're still trying to grow it as a spectacle, where it was hosted meant it received an enthusiastic local reception.

I do also think it would have been better off elsewhere where there is more gravel and further away from some of the traditional bases of cycling. Some parts of eastern Europe for example would make for a spectacular race.

[Spoker]

US riders at unbound 'The ex pros from Europe race negatively".
Last weekend the racing was full on from the start (M/F) and the US racers send their cat.