I get a bit misty-eyed about the 3T Exploro. I remember when it came out; the buzz around it was wild. ‘Gravel’ was in its infancy (no, don’t start about ’90s MTB, we haven’t the time) and I was razzing around the canal towpaths of Leeds on a cyclocross bike wondering why anyone in their right mind would make an aero gravel bike, as well as very much wanting one. This was further compounded when a friend of mine actually bought one, but fortunately for my beleaguered post-university bank balance, we were different enough in height that I never rode it.
The Exploro hasn’t stagnated since its inception and now exists in three guises – the ‘Pro’, which is the OG model, the ‘Ultra’ for bikepacking, designed primarily around 650b wheel usage, and the ‘Racemax’, optimised for 700c wheels with narrower tyres. Now it seems the Italian brand is creating two divergent streams of off-road evolution.
Earlier in the year the brand launched its Racemax Italia, a bike very much aimed at the gravel racing we see at the pointy end of events like Unbound. Now it has launched the Extrema Italia, a bike clearly heading in a different direction. There’s still an aero package, but the stated aim of this new lineage is to tackle far more challenging terrain. Think of events like the Atlas Mountain race, where half the field turns up on mountain bikes.
I’ve been using the Extrema Italia for a month or so of extremely filthy gravel riding, and on the whole, it’s performed excellently, particularly when the going gets really rough. The problem is, for that kind of riding, you start to wonder if you should just use an MTB…
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Design and aesthetics
Gravel bike chat, whether around the design table or down the pub always comes back to tyres. The hook for the Extrema Italia is that it can run tyres as big as 700c x 57mm, and my test bike arrived with 50mm Continental Race Kings. Running tyres that wide isn’t necessarily new for gravel bikes; my long-term Fairlight Secan can run tyres that wide, but only by sizing down the rim to 650b. The slow demise of 650b as a wheel size for gravel has been happening year after year, with fewer…
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