As I said, there are many styles or flavours. Unplanned rides for adventure? Fine! However, gravel cycling is the sports discipline most relying on GPS navigation. As a GCN presenter once said: 'The GPS navigation has totally changed the cycling. Now, you can ride for hundreds of miles never stopping, and you will always make the correct turn!' Fancy a group of several hundred or even a thousand of riders of both sex. They follow a 100+ or 160+ or 500+ or several thousand km course, and they are always on course (or are disqualified). It is often the SOLO category (where a rider is 100% self-supported and has to maintain a separation from any other rider except for the feeding zones). In the OPEN category, the riders can help each other but only can get any external help in the feeding zones.
Gravel cycling as a discipline means: "Ride far and ride fast. Be self-supported". The Ultra riders often use dynamos to keep their navigation and lighting (as well as the phone) working!
View attachment 217268
Many gravel riders wear hydration packs (as well as carry extra water bottles). The GPS bike computer is even not optional!
Gravel cycling is very different from road cycling. In road cycling, it is a
peloton. In gravel cycling, a
group is only formed on leisure rides (
coffee rides) or by several strong riders on the race.
Drafting is very difficult in gravel cycling.
Lithuanian Express, or a team of three Lithuanian racers who once dominated the Staged Race format.
Unlike in road racing, there is a great sense of camaraderie in gravel cycling. Also, the "being self-supported" is the thing. Once, riding in cold, wind and pouring rain on a gravel race, I saw a man running with his bike in the mud! I, and several other riders stopped and had a chat with him in English. The Lithuanian hero had his drivetrain damaged beyond repair. He couldn't be helped so he was running with his bike in the dire conditions for 12 km to the finish line! And he had a podium in a 3-day Staged Race!
Anyone can present own youth pictures riding gravel on a regular bike. Anyone can flash some historical photos from the times asphalt wasn't even a thing. Nothing of that makes one a gravel cyclist. Participating in the sport does.
Dear Stefan, I realize that this is a gravel topic, but your comparisons to road riding and racing range from the ignorant to the ridiculous.
First, you seem to be confusing "sport" and "competition". They are two different and distinct things. There are joggers that never enter a marathon, lap swimmers that never stand on a start stand, and bicycle riders that never pin on a number. A ride and a race are two completely different things. In formal events, they are permitted and potentially licensed differently. A ride is a non-competitive event, and a race is a competitive event. They run under different sets of guidelines or regulations, and are insured differently.
The equipment both road and gravel riders and racers use can be exactly the same. These days, every road racer uses a GPS computer. They may not need it for self-guided navigation (not that races don't go off course, they do all the time), but they have rider and ride metrics in front of them. They may also have the course loaded, with the distance to finish displayed as a data screen. Hydration packs are not allowed in road racing by regulation. Feeding and mechanical support, either on the ground or from a vehicle, is also strictly regulated. Yet, except at the elite levels of the sport, where team staff support riders during training, most road racers train in a self-supported fashion.
On the peloton. The peloton is defined as the main group of riders in contention for the win in a road race. It has nothing to do with road riding, where a group of riders riding at speed, trading turns on the front to keep others in the draft, is called a paceline. The draft is utilized in every single discipline in cycling, except where deliberately not allowed by regulation (in road individual time trials and triathlons). Gravel is no exception. I would encourage you to watch the pro field in a gravel race. The front group are all drafting, at least until one of them drops the rest for the win. Your picture above shows a guy with clip-on extensions, to reduce his wind exposure in non-technical areas of the course. There is nothing stopping others from lining up behind him to take advantage of this.
Unlike in road racing, there is a great sense of camaraderie in gravel cycling.
I'm going to file this statement under the "ignorant" category. I don't know if you've ever ridden organized group rides or races on the road. If not, then you just don't know about what goes on, and this is your impression from the outside. That's a fair point of view, but that doesn't legitimize this ridiculous statement. First, road racing is first and foremost a team sport. At the highest levels, team results are significantly more important than individual results. Team results and rankings control which races teams are allowed to enter, how much they get paid, and indirectly, how they will attract sponsors. That is due to the structure of the regulations that govern the sport.
But all that doesn't mean that there is any less of a sense of camaraderie in road racing at every level, from the local criterium to the World Tour. The most successful teams (formal, or just a group of friends) are the teams that work well together. The same can be said for individuals. Riders change teams all the time, and they have long memories. While collaboration between teams is regulated, lots of cooperation goes on that push the limits in this area. Look what happened at this year's Road World Championships. Team USA decided the night before that they wanted a win for the country. They are allowed to do that, because, although they race for different trade teams, they are all on the same national team for that race. This is not allowed in other races, but it definitely happens often, quietly and discretely. Nobody does this better than the Belgians.
There is plenty of camaraderie in road riding as well. Organized rides almost always have a "no drop" group. That means, nobody leaves the group without support or after making a mutual decision to withdraw. If someone has a mechanical problem, we all stop and help to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If a rider isn't feeling it that day, and wants to cut their ride short, we make sure that they know their way back, and if not, or they are not feeling well, someone sacrifices their ride and accompanies them back to the start. If the ride is a long, difficult one, and the group is tired, the stronger riders will get to the front and do all the work in order to get the group back to the start in time. I can't tell you how many times I've done both of these things, and there are plenty of other examples.
If you don't like or appreciate road riding and/or racing, that's fine. It's not for you. But don't throw shade on a sport that you don't understand.
I'm afraid she would be too fast for me! It is 7 C.
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