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UCI Gravel World Championships 2022, October 8-9, Italy

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The thing I find strange about the course is that it seems to completely miss the point of the US gravel scene. As far as I know the biggest races are closer to the ultra-endurance category than your typical one day race. Of course getting road pros to make more than a token appearance at that sort of event would be a hard sell because preparing for and recovering from a 9+ hour effort is a lot more disruptive than the racing they're used to.

maybe, Tiffany Cromwell seems to enter a few gravel races every year whilst in the US that arent quite ultra endurance length, just with lots of climbing, and Valterri has created a kind of gravel sportive event in Finland which seems to be that same kind of mix, so its doable.

Id prefer it not to turn into just another event a bunch of roadies turn up at, I like it to be more a specialism that requires bike skills that dont make you the best road racer.

as for the tv coverage Id guess the problem, which may link into the course format, is youve got to use vehicles that can cope with off road, that means chunky tread tyres, which inevitably rips up the surface especially if the route is laps of the same course, so it starts to become a bigger influence in the race , if the tv bike sits infront of the riders, its potentially hampering or even destroying the lines they want to take, if it sits behind its affecting them less though not giving you the coverage you are used to.

I kind of see it as an experiment really for the UCI to learn what works and what doesnt with it
 
I have this on the background and I genuinally don't find any appeal to this. This isn't road, isn't cyclocross and isn't MTB but at the same time doesn't bring anything substantially different from that sports.

Gravel is great as a superation event. Test your limits an absurd amount of hours in some hidden corner of the world, without support and in the end camp with the mates while drinking a pint going over the day's ride.

This event seems like a cash grab. Make some heavy pocket amateurs pay for some qualifying events to then pay to participate in a World Championship. But since they want for this money grab to be somewhat credible let's invite some pros who never done a day of gravel before, it gives the heavy pocket amateurs a chance of telling the tale of when they rode in the same World Championship as Sagan and keep brands happy. But for that they need to show it live, so get a moto, a heli, a crappy camera and deliver a coverage like we are in the times of CRT televisions and 240p streams.
 
This race is just really weird. It‘s like a flat, oversized MTB course without any specialists where no one in the race actually cares.
Gravel has been being sold as the next big thing and we're hearing endlessly about how fast it's growing from the bike companies and from the industry press and how it's the future and we need to get in on this bandwagon urgently and how it's all unsanctioned and unfiltered and achingly cool. Looking at this, we are left with two obvious conclusions, at least one of which would appear to be true:

  • Gravel is in fact the Emperor's New Clothes, it is good for participation but as a competitive event it's far too early in its development to realistically support an event like this, and the spectacle is greatly harmed with a field of world class riders by not really successfully providing the same challenge as CX, MTB or road while not being sufficiently different enough to have its own identity outside of that
  • Gravel is vibrant, rapidly growing and interesting, but the success of marketing it has largely been self-propelled and relying on selling to participants rather than TV audiences, and growing to the extent where events need to be sanctioned and rulesets drawn up has meant the UCI has inadvertently robbed the discipline of much of the identity that made it appealing in the first place. As of now the only identity the novice viewer will get from this is of a less interesting MTB, or a road race with retired riders and those that didn't make the cut in pro road racing competing with a small number of moonlighting top pros.
 
Gravel has been being sold as the next big thing and we're hearing endlessly about how fast it's growing from the bike companies and from the industry press and how it's the future and we need to get in on this bandwagon urgently and how it's all unsanctioned and unfiltered and achingly cool. Looking at this, we are left with two obvious conclusions, at least one of which would appear to be true:

  • Gravel is in fact the Emperor's New Clothes, it is good for participation but as a competitive event it's far too early in its development to realistically support an event like this, and the spectacle is greatly harmed with a field of world class riders by not really successfully providing the same challenge as CX, MTB or road while not being sufficiently different enough to have its own identity outside of that
  • Gravel is vibrant, rapidly growing and interesting, but the success of marketing it has largely been self-propelled and relying on selling to participants rather than TV audiences, and growing to the extent where events need to be sanctioned and rulesets drawn up has meant the UCI has inadvertently robbed the discipline of much of the identity that made it appealing in the first place. As of now the only identity the novice viewer will get from this is of a less interesting MTB, or a road race with retired riders and those that didn't make the cut in pro road racing competing with a small number of moonlighting top pros.
Appeal vs participants vs appeal to TV audiences is indeed the crisis it seems we're looking at. "Gravel is growing, what if we got in the road stars, maybe it'll blow up". And maybe the huge popularity of Strade Bianche also plays a role.

For me the big question is what the model should be of top level gravel races. Is a certain degree of overlap with the road peloton desired?

I can definitely see full time gravel riders get mad at this event suddenly being 'their' WC with 3rd rate roadies being able to win without even much of a contest.
 
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