Cyclo-cross began as a niche winter pursuit, a way of cross-training for road riders in the winter to spice things up. Now, while not as popular as road or gravel, it has a devoted worldwide audience who are unusually obsessive over tyre choice.
All the clamour at pro road or gravel races tends to be around framesets, wheels or the groupset, but watch the start of any cyclo-cross race and the cameras will always pan down across the grid to show what tyres each rider is running. This may seem like an odd thing to cover at first – you’d never see the same in a road race – but more than any other component, tyres make the biggest difference to your overall chances in a ‘cross race.
The best cyclo-cross tyres can be pretty expensive, and as such it is rare to find even the best cyclo-cross bikes specced with them from the factory, so if you’re looking to upgrade but not sure where to start then read on. We’ll take you through casing constructions, the benefits of tubeless vs tubes (which may surprise some of you), widths, and just why everyone gets so excited about green tyres.
Cyclo-cross vs gravel tyres
Cyclo-cross is an extremely specific cycling discipline, and while for a time there was a great deal of similarity between cyclo-cross bikes and gravel bikes, the two have diverged for some time now, leaving ‘cross bikes left to tackle the demands of the mud between the tape. Yes, with the emergence of the best gravel race bikes there has been some re-convergence of the two again (here’s looking at you, Specialized Crux), but in terms of tyres especially the disciplines are worlds apart.
Gravel demands speed on a much greater variety of terrain, and as such you usually find a tread that accounts for that. Slick centres and more knobbly shoulders about, but as gravel tyres are unconstrained by UCI regulations (for now) they are usually far wider and therefore need to be less knobbly to achieve the same level of grip. Furthermore, it is rare to see 180-degree hairpins in a gravel race, while cyclo-cross courses usually feature several. In fact, the cornering in cyclo-cross races is generally a lot tighter, and so more pronounced shoulder knobs are key on ‘cross tyres.
Finally, there is tyre construction. The need to be able to stand up to higher pressures, and have greater puncture resistance; gravel, and especially flint gravel, is far sharper than mud and grass. They are almost always the standard all-rubber construction, while the best…
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