What makes a perfect cyclo-cross bike? This British team thinks it has the answer, with a gravel model

Sprinting off-road, then running uphill, hoisting your bike onto your shoulder and leaping over obstacles - cyclo-cross is not for the faint hearted. It puts serious demands on the body, and the bike. So, logic might follow that you’d need a very specific bike to race… right?

Cyclo-cross was often a way for road racers to train in the off-season, long before the first mountain bikes were cobbled together in North America. These downtime road racers would use modified road bikes to race across hills, through fields and over fences. A discipline now largely contained to the darker months, CX boomed in popularity in the 1970s, after its debut World Championships in Paris twenty years before.

The barriers to enter the sport are low in amateur racing. Anything that rolls, can race, whether that is a cyclo-cross-specific Specialized Crux ('highly coveted as one of the best 'cross platforms going', according to Cycling Weekly), or a bike with tyres thick enough to keep you vertical through mud and winter off-road slop.

“In cyclo-cross the bike needs to be super responsive when accelerating out of corners, handle smoothly on steep descents and be light and comfy when shouldering the bike,” Spectra rider, and the rider currently second-place in the National Trophy Series, Toby Barnes, said.

A cyclo-cross bike is usually defined by its light frame (perfect for carrying up-hill, or over styles), short wheelbase, wide-ranging gears (between 40-44t), powerful brakes and high bottom brackets - all designed to aid manoeuvrability and comfort across 45-plus minutes of off-road racing. A bit more room above the tyres is also common, to allow for a few layers of dirt to build up on wider tyres (anywhere between 28-35mm wide - though for UCI sanctioned events, 33mm is the maximum width allowed).

“Half the battle with a cycling team, let alone a cyclo-cross team, is the equipment and having high quality equipment,” Spectra team manager, Gina Ball, said.

Though a CX specific bike can prove a decisive edge against competitors, Spectra’s riders will instead compete on Pearson’s On&On Race gravel bike for the coming winter season. The gravel bike is equipped with an Omnia carbon wheelset and Shimano GRX 815 groupset. With a combined race-day weight of 7.88kg when rigged as a gravel bike, the weight would exceed UCI cyclo-cross competition regulation - with these cyclo-cross modifications, the On&On Race has been approved by the cycling body.

And the On&On Race has already proved successful for Spectra’s riders. Irish National Champion, Esther Wong, rode the On&On Race in the Hope Supercross Series in September: “She went from riding a cyclo-cross bike she had for years to the Pearson and was off the front immediately, eventually finishing second,” Bell said.

Two of their riders have already been selected for the first two UCI Cyclo-cross World Cups of the season.

“Although the On&On Race isn’t an out and out cyclo-cross bike, it still holds its own against the 'big' brands in terms of weight, agility and responsiveness that the riders really enjoy,” Ball stressed.

Already having secured a first at the Derby round of the National Trophy Series' under-23 category (and second in the elite women’s) aboard the On&On Race, Elena Day is shifting her focus towards the continent. “For this season, my main focus is earning selection for the World Cups,” the Spectra rider said. “I aim to build on my early-season form in races across the UK and Belgium, and gain as much international racing experience as possible.”

Might this unlikely CX bike go on to podium at a World Cup race? Pearson are hoping so.

The UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup begins in Tábor, Czech Republic on 23 November.