Five Tech Trends We Found from SBT GRVL 2024 – Yurika.R

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Gravel bike races come in all variations. Some are basically XC mountain bike courses. Others are sandy and chunky. Others are champagne smooth. All of them require preparing for a gravel race with training as well as gear. SBT GRVL 2024 is no exception.

What tires do people use for a gravel bike race like SBT GRVL? What kind of bikes do people use? And what gearing do people use for a gravel race?

Here’s a small sliver of what gear people are using at SBT GRVL this year, both pros and non-pros alike. Below are five key trends and tech takeaways from one of the biggest gravel bike races in North America.

What trends are we seeing here? Among other things, the pros are taking a very different approach to tire choice, likely due to the ruggedness of the Black course. SRAM 1x drivetrains are more popular than ever on gravel. And the gravel bikes people are riding? They’re far nicer than they’ve ever been.

This isn’t all the takeaways we had from one of the biggeest gravel races in North America, however, as Betsy Welch covered three takeaways from SBT GRVL’s racing.

The pros aren’t afraid to max out their tire clearance

Many pros have gone for wider tires than the traditional 38 to 42 mm slick gravel tires a ride like SBT GRVL is known for. That’s in large part due to an updated Black Course, which was revised to better work with the ranchers in the area. The new route is much looser overall, with small sand traps that are hard to distinguish from the otherwise smooth, fast champagne gravel.

SBT GRVL recommends a 45 mm tire for the event as a result. Many race gravel bikes can’t fit much wider than that, even if they wanted to. That doesn’t mean that folks didn’t try.

Alex Howes pulled up aboard the Cannondale SuperSix Evo SE, a bike designed to fit a 45 mm tire. And while he was able to fit a 50 mm Continental tire in the fork with room to spare, out back he was limited to just a 44 mm wide Vittoria Mezcal option.

More surprisingly were the 1-2 finishers Keegan Swenson and Tobin Ortenblad, who both opted for the same tire combination: a 29 x 2.25″ Maxxis Aspen ST up front and a 29 x 2.1″ Maxxis Aspen out back (limited by frame clearance out back).

“No regrets on these tires. They were fantastic,” Ortenblad told Velo after his sprint to a second-place finish.

The non-pros among us are perfectly happy on a narrower tire

Not everyone has gone away from the 38 to 42 mm width gravel tires, as all the other courses still feature the same smooth champagne gravel that SBT GRVL is known for.

Most non-pros looking to maximize their efficiency went with a lightly treaded or slick gravel bike tire. While there was just about every tire manufacturer represented, the most common tires were the Specialized Pathfinder Pro, the Schwalbe G-One RS, the Vittoria Terreno Dry, and perhaps surprisingly, the Maxxis Rambler.

Maybe the right gravel tire is the one that’s already on your bike

The Maxxis Rambler is a great all-rounder, but it’s not the first tire folks think about when looking for a fast gravel tire. So why was the Rambler so popular then?

Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘run what ya brung?’

The fact of the matter is that unless you’re riding the Black course, riders don’t need to think too hard about what tires they’re going to use. Rain is rarely an issue at SBT, and mud is even less frequent. Swapping to a tire that takes advantage of the ‘champagne gravel’ of the area is a good idea. But using a tire that you know has plenty of puncture resistance is likely the better move.

The gravel bikes are nicer than ever

SBT GRVL 2023 was full of first-time gravel race attendees, as we covered last year. This year, I met a number of new riders just as excited for their first gravel bike event. The difference, though? The bikes this year are far nicer.

I think this is more so a general trend in the bike industry. Folks who got their first gravel bikes in the heat of the pandemic are taking advantage of the sheer number of deals you can find. And that’s not limited to just buying a new bike either. Many folks are upgrading their existing bikes, often with big-ticket items like new drivetrains or wheels.

You could say that the bikes becoming nicer is a reflection of the average SBT GRVL rider. This person needs to have the funds for not only a bike capable of riding a long distance but money to travel all the way to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, pay ski town lodging prices, as well as the costs for everything else along the way. I say that people buying their second or third gravel bike means times are here to stay.

SRAM 1x is taking over

SRAM’s 1x drivetrain has become the predominant gravel bike groupset at SBT GRVL, both at the pro and non-pro levels. The new SRAM Red AXS XPLR 13-speed groupset has quickly found its way to a willing few to find the latest and greatest, but SRAM Rival AXS had to be the most common electronic groupset out there.

More interestingly, it looked like Rival AXS was the most popular groupset on new bikes. There’s good reason: it offers similar performance to SRAM’s top-end groupsets, but does it at a price point that is far more palatable. Pair that with a 10-44t 12-speed cassette and you have just about all the gearing one would need for this race weekend.

Shimano GRX is still a popular option, but many of those groupsets are from the previous generation of 11-speed groups. Most of those bikes also used 1x drivetrains. What you didn’t see much of was 2×12 mechanical Shimano shifting though a few riders–including Black Course winner Lauren Stephens–had some form of the new Shimano GRX Di2 2×12 groupset. Nonetheless, it wasn’t quite as common as I’m sure Shimano would like.

Classified–the company replacing the front derailleur with its own two-speed hub–had a bit of presence at Unbound. That wasn’t the case here. Campagnolo also wasn’t anywhere to be found outside of a few Ekar groupsets. I probably saw more Microshift Sword groupsets than Ekar, which was a quick decline for a groupset that was so popular just a few years ago.