The UCI Gravel World Championships are taking place this weekend, in a little (and I mean little) place called Nannup in Western Australia, where the population of 538 is about to be considerably swollen by an influx of bike riders, mechanics, teams and fans – or at least the ones who can get themselves there, which is no mean feat in itself.
Outside of Perth, Western Australia (which could swallow most of Europe and still have room for a stubbie and snag) is pretty damn remote. Move away from the gorgeous coastline by more than a mile or two, and you might as well be on Mars. I once covered a car rally that went right across the state, and one night we were hosted by a young family who looked after a property that was bigger than England, and aside from about a million goats (literally), they were the only ones living there.
But it’s not just the sense of agoraphobia that the world’s best gravel riders are going to have to contend with this weekend. It’s also the terrain. Specifically the pea gravel. Which I am willing to bet even the likes of defending world champion Florian Vermeersch and elite riders such as Marianne Vos have not come across before.
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In what now feels like a different lifetime, I lived in Australia for over a decade and for several consecutive years I competed in the four-day Cape-to-Cape mountain bike race. I say competed – in reality I didn’t see much of the front pack, which regularly included Aussie Olympians like Rebecca Henderson and Dan McConnell, after the starting line each day, but we all rode the same trails.
And what trails. Tracing what seemed like endless dreamy miles of sublime singletrack, the route went from Cape Leeuwin on the edge of the Great Australian Bite, through the Margaret River wine-making region to Cape Naturaliste, pausing at a boutique brewery or vineyard each night.
Everything, from the wildlife and wine to the wending trails, was stunning, but after stage two, when we first encountered it, all anyone would talk about post-ride was the bloody pea gravel. In more recent years, a whole new network of community-constructed singletrack trails have been built and incorporated into this race, specifically based around this unique surface material. And this is where the World Champs are happening, in Nannup.
Organisers and locals are bigging up the fact that the event is happening on ‘real gravel’. And I can’t argue with that – there’s none of this root-and-mud, or chunky stone nonsense that counts for ‘gravel’ in the UK and England. This terrain is covered in billions of pea-sized, semi-spherical pieces of stone, such as you might see in a cartoon or slapstick film deployed by crafty kids to make people pursuing them skid all over the place and fall on their arses.
Pea gravel is as loose as a goose to ride on. Even on mountain bike tyres, berms become terrifying, any use of brakes only results in uncontrolled skidding and the minute you stand up out of the saddle and pedal, your back wheel spins out and you come to a near stop. It is going to be very interesting watching how the elite riders known for their climbing prowess get on.
I caught up with reigning British gravel champ Jenson Young shortly after he’d arrived in Western Australia and done a recce of the first 30km of the route, and the very first thing he wanted to talk about was the pea gravel.
“It’s nothing like the gravel I’ve been on before,” he told me. “It’s really fine. It looks like it’d be grippy, but actually there’s not much grip at all. The slippage is at the point where, as soon as you get out of your seat on a climb, your back wheel is just sliding everywhere, which is something I’ve never really had in British gravel events, where the gravel is chunkier.”
Young has decided to make some technical changes, to deal with the pea gravel. “I’ve gone with a lighter set of wheels than I’d normally use, and I’m using a mountain-bike tyre that’s sort of in-between the slick and the grit,” he tells me.
“But it’s weird – it’s so fast rolling on some bits, and there’s no chunky gravel, so you don’t really need the puncture protection, but you definitely do want the grip on the corners, where it’s really loose. You have to keep some weight on the back wheel. It doesn’t really suit the fast climbers. I actually think the heavier riders might do well.”
I don’t know about that. I was once put in the ‘Clydesdale Class’ when I entered a bike race in Australia (they’re not known for their tactfulness Down Under) and I still slid all over the place on the pea gravel.
But one thing is for sure, it will certainly make for an interesting couple of races on Saturday and Sunday.
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