When someone offers you more comfort and more speed on the bike, you don’t say no. But what if it comes with a bunch of caveats, including more weight and more expense? Perhaps you’d still take it. But I’m going to confess to emitting an inward sigh when I saw that 32-inch wheels were now, officially ‘a thing’ (just a minor thing, admittedly) in the gravel world.
Displayed at the Sea Otter in California – round one of the Life Time Grand Prix and key industry expo date – the outsized hoops purport to offer more compliance thanks to a bigger contact patch, as well as more momentum and thus more speed.
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How much of my stuck-in-the-mud attitude is rooted in the fact I cut my cycling teeth in the Eighties – the decade which boasts the most beautiful bikes ever made – and I secretly want them all to stay like that, I don’t know. I’m also not entirely averse to change and, I imagine, like most of us, I appreciate the better braking, more ergonomic geometry, light weight and excellent tyres of modern machines.
