My point was that even a guy as strong and light as Phil Gaimon may need climbing gears way smaller than 1:1. You can get the same ratios with e. g. a 11-36 cassette or 10-36 cassette with a smaller chain ring up front.
If my current bike were e. g. a 3T Exploro, an Open UP or something dedicated to climbing, I’d have considered something like a 11-42 cassette with a 1x drivetrain (I prefer 1x). I reckon I’d be supremely comfortable with that since my (3x10-speed) mountain bike has a 11-36 cassette that has identical gearing, save for 10th cog, which is a 37 and a missing 11th cog.
In fact, I think this is another point I’d make in favor of way easier gears for most, and that is that road bikes fit wider and wider tires, which means you can take the path less traveled.
Like what? I’ve been climbing very slowly on my mountain bike. I reckon there’d be climbs where the front wheel might lift off (I’ve had climbs like that at Lake Garda on my mountain bike, loved that).
My point is that the 11-34 cassette sacrifices 4 or 5 (!) closely spaced gears at the top for only 2 extra teeth. If I am willing to do that, I’d much rather get an 11-40 or 11-42 cassette instead, because then the sacrifice is really worth it. Or I’d get the SRAM cassette if I wanted closely spaced gears.
I should say that I’m not very sensitive to differences in cadence at speeds lower than 33–35ish km/h, which I reckon has to do with the rotational inertia of the wheel, which grows quadratically with angular velocity. So the more tightly spaced gears in the middle of the 11-34 cassette don’t really matter to me.
Saibot aka Rides of Japan does the same. If I were riding more by myself and/or had more gravel routes nearby, I’d have chosen a setup like that, too. But Japan is mostly about road bikes. Mountain bike trails are intentionally kept secret, which makes it supremely annoying. A gravel bike could be useful, though, but I’d still use that in a “mostly roadish” configuration.
I switched from a mountain bike to a road bike about three years ago. Roadie culture is very different from mountain bike culture, and in many ways not in a good way. In my experience, mountain bikers tend to be much more laid back. It doesn’t matter what socks you wear (I thought this was a joke when I first heard it), and when you go on a tour, people wait for one another without stressing the other person out. It is much easier to go riding with people of very different ability. You just chill and eat a little while waiting for the others. IMHO this makes mountain biking much more inviting to newbies who are willing to suffer, but who are stressed out by others being much faster than they are.
My sister is starting to get into cycling, and I hear her being a little self-conscious every now and then. Roadies should learn from mountain bikers when it comes to this. Our sport should be more inviting and make it easier for people to start. One of the obstacles IMHO is the unsuitable gearing. Somehow people think they are their gearing, i. e. if their bike has tougher gears, they’ll be faster. Physics doesn’t agree with that, obviously. 