Gravel bikes: From cycling outlier to drop-bar domination in under a decade

As the dust settles on another dramatic season of gravel racing it dawned on us just how much gravel bikes and indeed gravel cycling has changed in just a short space of time.

A decade ago, gravel content was a rarity on Cyclingweekly, Ribble convinced us that writing about their new CGR (Cross, gravel and road) was a good idea for a winter bikes feature but it was hard to imagine that we'd ever be writing about it as a standalone discipline.

In 2025 standalone discipline it is though, we've just had the World Gravel Championships and a few weeks ago I was in the North of England taking on the British National Gravel Championships which this year were supported by Ribble and have ran since 2021. Gravel cycling is no longer a niche hobby and is now an entire genre of cycling that attracts the World's best to races around the world, has fully funded teams trying to make their mark and is an area too important to ignore for any bike manufacturer.

Over the past few year's I've enjoyed exploring the country on my gravel bike, so much so that my mountain bike has been all but been made redundant. Gravel cycling now has another side to it as well though, a high octane, carb fueled, UCI accredited side...to see what all the fuss is about a few weekends ago I headed to Dalby Forest to compete in the British National Gravel Championships and my oh my did it open my eyes.

My bike for the day was Ribble's latest Ultra Grit, a bike that bares almost no similarity to the original CGR from less than a decade ago. It was very similar to the Ultra Grit that Ribble Outlier Jenson Young used to win the Friday night gravel time-trial though so I definitely couldn't use the bike as an excuse!

The Ultra Grit has loads of features which we've come to expect of the best gravel bikes: Super wide tyre clearances, internal frame storage, deep carbon wheels and a full carbon frame and fork which has at least one eye on aerodynamics. These are of course all features that today’s performance gravel cyclists demand but this wasn’t always the case...

Predicting the future or learning from the past?

Sean Hastings, Ribble Bikes CEO, explained to us that Ribble has been around since 1897 and in that long history has had a number of firsts, from bikes being built to order to custom colours, I was keen to see why gravel cycling has long been on Ribble's radar...

"The CGR, originally Cross, Gravel, Road, has now evolved in to Commute, Gravel, Road, because it's always about looking at what do people do, where are people riding and honestly I think that comes down from [the fact that] everyone in Ribble rides."

"We're at the event, the guys in the stores ride, I grew up riding in Dalby Forest, and because of that we see what everyone is doing and I think that's why we've been early to adopt a lot of these things because the people in the office and making the bikes are asking for this stuff. Oh, and we're a Northern brand so it's unpolished, they'll tell you how it is!"

Some of the brightest bikes of the weekend belonged to the Ribble Outlier team including third place finisher Sophie Wright's Ultra Grit but why does a brand like Ribble choose gravel as the area it wants to sponsor?

"We looked at which area of cycling is really moving and it felt like that's where gravel was. Ribble is from the North West, it's always felt like a little bit of an outlier, it's unusual and it's done these things first and so the name 'Outliers' felt about right and then we thought right, if we're doing something different, how do you look different and hence the really vivid purple and pink colourway. It's also a really nice thing for us to be able to do because with some of the custom colours we do, some of the customer's bikes are really in your face and they're always the ones that get the comments"

You only need compare the original CGR to the Ultra Grit to see how much gravel bikes have changed in the last decade or so but will this continue?

"It's looking at what the customer wants, people talk about innovation, we try not to, we try and talk about what problems we're solving instead." - Hastings

Change for the better?

Back in 2017 when we first wrote about the Ribble CGR most bikes were getting more and more specialist, they were getting lighter, they were getting stiffer and it seemed to some extent that they were being tailored more and more towards what a pro would want. Most of us though, are not pros and some luckily some brands saw this as an opportunity.

One such brand was Ribble, the 125 year-old Preston based outfit was adamant that there was more to cycling than 23mm tyres and weight weenie builds and that was the motivation behind launching this CGR, a bike that could go anywhere and wasn’t constrained to just the tarmac. These days that doesn’t sound an all too forward thinking concept, brands such as Ribble offer a large range of multifaceted bikes that are capable of far more than just one specific purpose.

So, yes, gravel cycling has changed an almost scary amount in just a short space of time but for once I think change is a good thing. Today's gravel bikes are far more versatile than ever before so cheers to us, the riders, for driving change, and cheers to the bike brands that have actually listened!