Sterrato, ribinoù, caminos de olivos. Call them what you like, the gravel sectors we see littered into road races are simultaneously an eye-catching feature, a hazardous obstacle, and an opportunity to flex some multi-disciplinary bike handling skills during the road racing season.
While races that feature cobbled roads have formed a mainstay of the road racing calendar throughout the sport’s history thanks to the significant influence of French and Belgian cycling culture, gravel (with the odd exception) is a more contemporary addition to the ever-broadening menu of surfaces on which to do battle on two wheels.
The crossover between disciplines cuts both ways. With the appeal of gravel burgeoning, there’s been a blending of boundaries between the discrete world of gravel racing and other disciplines, with stars from the world of road and cyclocross taking part in gravel events; the UCI-sanctioned Gravel World Championships have attracted marquee names from Marianne Vos and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney to Mathieu van der Poel and Matej Mohorič (indeed, with the exception of the women’s event in 2022, the podium of every single edition of the men’s and women’s UCI Gravel World Championship has been entirely populated by professional road riders).
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