Gravel Cycling Has Changed A LOT - From Outlier To Mainstream

Hello and welcome to a misty morning at the 2025 British National Gravel Champs

We've got some pretty handy riders lined up on the start line. Alistair and Johnny Brownlee, Ben and Connor Swift

and probably the pre-race favourites, the Ribble Outliers, including Jenson Young, who won the TT just two days ago

What I'm really interested in is their bikes and their tech. So let's go and have a closer look

So behind me is the men's elite championship where they're battling it out for the title

of being the fastest gravel rider in the country. But yesterday it was me on the start line. Let's

go and take a look at the bike that I used. It certainly wasn't one from 10 years ago. So this

is the Ribble Ultra Grit that I used yesterday for my effort around the British National Gravel

Champs course and it's got loads of features that the world's best gravel riders have come to expect

from a gravel bike in 2025. So for example it's got a full carbon frame, it's got a fully integrated

cockpit and as you can see there's no cables showing anywhere. It's got an electronic group

set. It's got some internal frame storage hiding in here. So in there I had my spare tubes, pump

and stuff like that so that I don't need to have it in my back pockets. And then I can fill them

full of food. It's got deep carbon wheels that are really rather wide. And if you look here

it's got absolutely tons of tire clearance. Now all of these features you will find on a top

gravel bike but 10 to 15 years ago these would have seemed absolutely obscene. So let's take

a trip down memory lane to see what I mean This is the Ribble CGR a bike Ribble claim can do it all with CGR standing for cross gravel and road that a bold statement backed up by a high spec and a very loud paint job oh yes we been digging

through the archives and we found this alec briggs talking us through the 2017 ribble cgr now i

remember this bike as being a bit of a trendsetter because in 2017 many bikes were getting more and

more specialist. They were getting lighter, they were getting stiffer and they seemed like they

were getting more and more designed for pros. Most of us aren't pros though and some brands

saw this as an opportunity. One such brand was Ribble. They thought there's more to cycling than

23mm tyres and weight weenie builds and that was the inspiration behind the CGR. A bike that wasn't

just constrained to tarmac. Now in 2025 that might not seem like an all too forward thinking idea

but you've got to remember gravel cycling is still a relatively new concept. In fact the national

gravel champs weren't even a thing until 2021. So just how much have gravel bikes changed

Just how much has gravel cycling changed? And can I survive my hardest gravel cycling race yet

having experienced the savage course for myself and been very grateful for the ultra grit gravel

bikes modern features i sat down for a chat with ribble ceo to discuss how gravel cycling has gone

from outlier to mainstream and how our riding habits are influencing Ribble's current range

and future bikes. So Ribble's been around since 1897 so it's been around for a long time

sort of within that there's been all sorts of firsts so you know we every Ribble bike's built

to order okay so you know so there no such thing as an average person so our view is why an average bike so you know we pretty unusual in doing that at the scale you know we been doing some custom colour so you can customise your bikes you can have any colour We been doing that for you know for years and years

So the CGR, yeah, you know, kind of originally crossed gravel road and with the one we've brought out recently

we've evolved that into commute gravel road because it's always about looking at what do people do, where are people riding

So we're here at the event, the guys that work here from the stores, they all ride, we all ride

I grew up riding in Dolby Forest round here. Because of that, we see what everyone's doing

And I think that's why we've been quite early to adopt loads of these things, because the people that are in the office, the guys that are making the bikes

the guys that are in the store, are asking for this stuff. And we're a northern brand, so it's unpolished, right

You know, they'll just tell you exactly how it is. Yeah, there's no polish on it

You know, the bike actually that we've got here, so this is one of the prototype Ultra Grits

So the team were riding these long before we released them, you know good six eight months before we brought it to market and again you just you get this you

get this feedback and it's fantastic because then you just iterate iterate iterate and you said

earlier about the custom custom colors yeah now some of the brightest bikes going around here at

gravel national champs have certainly been the ribble outlier ultra grits so can you tell us a

bit more about that partnership how outliers came about ribbles obviously worked with um different

pro teams you know sort of like you know in different formats on and off so we had rebellion

that was in crit racing last year. We supported actually the women's Smurfing Westrot team this year

So they were riding the new ultra race again about three months before it kind of came out

So that's great for us. But we were looking at actually, which area of cycling is really kind of moving

And it felt like that's where gravel was. Ribble's from, it's from the Northwest

It's always felt like a little bit of an outlier. It's a bit unusual. It's done these things first

And so actually the name outliers kind of felt about right. and then we said okay well if you're going to do something really different how do you look

different and hence the kind of like the you know the really sort of like vivid purple and pink

colourway came up and if you want to copy an outlier you can actually buy that exact bike on

the website you can it's exactly the same bike and again that's i think that's a really good

thing to be able to do you often get like replica bikes they not exactly the same so other than sort of like some of the small tweaks that some of the athletes will do to make it sort of like fit for them actually you can ride exactly that bike or if that a bit if that a bit too much you a

bit more of a shrinking violet then it comes in a kind of like in a really cool sort of like deep blue color but it's exactly the same bike what does ribble stand for today ribble stands out it

should be able to go up against anything riding in the uk it is different to riding like elsewhere

from big things like the range being you know a cgr you could you could go touring on it you could

ride every week on the road you could commute on it it's right down to silly things like all of our

bikes have got a threaded bottom bracket and that's a really specific thing you can make a bike lighter

you know but a threaded bottom bracket is it's going to be easier to maintain it means you can

look after it yourself and it's that thing to making sure it's right for people to ride year

round not just in the fair weather if that's what they want to do in the uk

even though this course this year was about as untechnical as elite level gravel racing gets

i can almost guarantee that all the quick guys are using at least a 42 mil tire 45 mil seemed

like the most common. Even though it was pretty forward thinking for its time, I'm still very glad

that I was on the modern gravel bike rather than that original Ribble CGR. The tyre clearances are

just nowhere near what we have now and gravel bikes in a short space of time have come on an

absolutely huge way. What this means is that for once I actually think that bikes have got far

better for consumers. All those aero touches, the wider tyre clearances, I think makes today's gravel

bikes far more versatile than they were 10 to 15 years ago. And that is a good thing. If you want to

find anything else about the UltraGrit that I use for British National Champs, then we'll pop a link

down in the description below. If you want to see more gravel content on the channel, then please

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