Gravel racing explained: how the sport is evolving and what it means for riders

Gravel racing has been the fastest-growing segment in all of cycling over the past decade or so. Sandwiched between traditional road cycling and mountain biking, it is a really accessible way to get into off-road adventuring. This short guide will help you understand where gravel racing came from, where it is today and how the sport is changing for the future.

Gravel racing is off-road racing on drop-bar bicycles. In some ways, gravel racing was always part of road cycling. Since the very first bicycles were produced, many riders were not content to stay within the confines of the road network. If you go back to the early editions of the Tour de France, you will find photos of the legends of the sport racing their road bikes on rough, unpaved roads. From the 1980s onwrads mountain biking exploded and dominated off-road riding, but for many it became too focused on extreme trails and less about adventure and exploration. In the 2000s, riders began emerging in America who preferred to explore their vast networks of unsealed backcountry roads, away from the ever-increasing traffic, on their adapted road bikes - these were the first gravel riders.

Soon, manufacturers caught up with their needs for more capable bikes, and they moved to riding dedicated gravel bikes with unique geometry and space for larger tyres. Gravel retained road cycling’s focus on covering long distances, but by doing this out in the woods and the hills, it introduced elements of adventure and self-sufficiency to the emerging sport. Today, as roads are less and less welcoming places for cyclists, more and more riders have embraced this style of racing and riding, and it has spread beyond its American heartlands to become a truly global sport.

In the modern world, where our day-to-day lives are more and more sanitised, gravel racing can bring a spark of adventure. While road cycling keeps us connected to the modern world via the tarmac, gravel cycling takes us out and away from the bustle, the noise and the traffic. When you get out there, you need to be fit, prepared and capable, and that calls to many people on a deep level.

Racing in gravel events tends to self-select into two categories, much like marathon racing: compete and complete. You can see this in iconic events like Unbound and the Traka. For the elite athletes, there are careers to be forged and races to be won in these prestigious races. Today, adding either of these races to your palmares can make a career. For the vast majority of riders, where they end up on the results sheet does not matter; it is about setting themselves a challenge that pushes them out of their comfort zone. They can select a distance that matches their riding level, and they find a huge sense of accomplishment in just crossing the finish line and making new friends along the way.

What makes gravel racing so special for many people is the sense of community and connection they find with the sport. They are heading out to face whatever the course and nature can throw at them, and that builds a strong sense of camaraderie. Yes, at the sharp end of the elite competition, it can be knives out, gritty racing. But for the majority of the field, they can meet new people, ride with them and face challenges together. More so than with road racing or mountain biking, gravel race organisers try to cultivate this sense of inclusivity around their races; they want people to feel part of something bigger than just strapping on a race number.

Gravel racing is going through its awkward teenage years right now because it is growing so quickly. More people are racing gravel than ever before, there are more different interpretations of the discipline than ever before, and there is a burgeoning class of elite gravel racers and teams. We are seeing a proliferation of interpretations of format, from the UCI Gravel Worlds Series, which tends to be lighter gravel with significant road stretches, to the classic gravel events like Unbound and the Traka, which venture further out away from the road, and on to events that cross into ultra-endurance and adventure territory with extreme distances and multi-day formats. 

We are starting to see more athletes from other disciplines, like mountain biking and road cycling, make the jump over to gravel, too. Athletes like Mathieu van der Poel and Puck Peiterse are leading the way on this, crossing disciplines to stay excited and energised in their racing. It is probably something in the DNA of an adventurer, but many of this new generation of athletes do not want to be constrained to doing one thing. The idea of racing the same circuit each year leaves them cold, and they want to try different formats, travel to new places and play with different bikes.

Of course, not all change is easy. With the influx of professional riders into the sport, the demands on race organisers are changing. Where once things could be more relaxed, professional racers demand clarity and consistency. In recent years, there have been several controversies at high-profile gravel races, and the coming years will be challenging for race organisers to meet these new demands without compromising the community spirit that gravel was built on.

With Canyon × DT Swiss All-Terrain Racing, we wanted to create a structure that works for this new crop of free-spirited athletes. We have brought together a group of high-performance athletes from a variety of backgrounds and given them a simple mission: go fast off-road.

This discipline-free approach means that they can target the races and the styles of riding that they find exciting, whether it is gravel, marathon MTB, cyclocross or ultra-endurance. We have left them to chart their own racing programmes and given factory-level support with our range of bikes and access to our engineering department to help them create products to be even faster.

With the diversity within modern gravel racing, we don’t believe that one bike can do it all. This is why we have created the Grail and the Grizl as very different gravel bikes: 

If you are looking for off-road speed, the Grail is as fast as it gets. By combining gravel versatility and roomy tyre clearance with the aerodynamic know-how from our road bikes, the Grail is a formidable race bike. With victories in Unbound, the Traka and the World Championships, you don’t need to take our word for it that it is fast.  

For riders looking to go further out, we built the Grizl. Designed to be stable, adaptable and dependable, no matter how far into the backcountry you are, the Grizl was created with a very different recipe than the Grail. With room for huge tyres, fitted with innovative solutions to help you stay comfortable and bristling with mounting points for as much as you need to carry, it’s built for the long haul.

This is an exciting time for gravel racing. While there are undoubtedly challenges to come with increased media coverage and more professional structures, we are also seeing new ideas of how to interpret gravel racing emerge. The blending of disciplines is bringing in fresh perspectives, new ideas and more riders to the melting pot, and that is a big win for riders. And while the front of the races may be shifting, where most of us find ourselves, some things are not changing at all and we don’t think there is a more welcoming endurance sport out there.

If you’re unsure which gravel bike suits your riding style, explore our buyer’s guide to compare models, features, and use cases. You can also use the Canyon bike comparison and bike finder tool to answer a few simple questions and discover the perfect gravel bike for where and how you ride.

We hope this has helped you understand gravel racing. See you off-road soon.