Why would the smaller chainring be better for gravel (for me)? The verdict of my post was that 42:11 = 3.82 is high enough of me. And at the low end 42:42 is low enough. I’m also fine with the jumps in between the gears. Other people might have a different riding style / terrain / strength etc. I’m just curious if I’m missing something here. Always keen to learn something and optimize - thanks for your input!
Two things: I think a lot of gravel bikes are used as quiver killers or as comfortable “bad road” bikes (as opposed to bad road bikes), so they do see quite a bit of road use in practice. So having a top gear that accommodates that will help some people. Moreover, gear selection depends very much on where you live. Where I live a 1-to-1 ratio would not suffice for gravel climbs. I sometimes use 34:32 = 1.05 @300+ W on sustained on-road climbs where I live to be able to spin above 70 rpm. Off-road I’d need a much lower gear than that. If you look at the plethora of first-impression videos, you see quite clearly that Campagnolo wants to cover alpine gravel climbs as well.
Of course, YMMV and if 1-to-1 suffices for you, then this is great. Ideally, you should have all the gears you need and no more.
Thanks for the clarification. Totally agree with the assumption that a lot of gravel bikes see a lot of tarmac. Mine replaced my road bike - but the top gear is fine with me (like I said, I aero tuck at 50+ km/h)
Since you initially responded to my gearing post I thought I’m missing out on a marginal gain somewhere with my 42t chainring. 
1:1 was more than sufficient for me bike packing in the Alps (on tarmac). But obviously if people go up hills off-road for a extended time a lower gearing makes a lot of sense - you are completely right there.
I use my Gravel bike as a group ride bike when I want to ride with friends who don’t quite have the fitness and I still want to get a decent workout. Losing that extra ~20W can help quite a bit to even the field
Agreed.
Quite generally, I think road bikes have horrible gearing for average people. The gears are way, way too tall. Like you wrote, you can go almost 50 km/h on a 42:11, which is pretty brisk on the flats. And since in almost all circumstances we have a thing called traffic, I don’t think people are pedaling past 60, 65 km/h in most circumstances. (There are only a few pieces of road where I can really let it rip. But since I don’t want to become an organ donor, I prefer not to take any risks, especially outside races.)
And on climbs, for most people 1-to-1 could still be a very hard gear. I don’t want to pretend I’m super, super quick, but if you have to do 4+ W/kg on a climb just to turn the pedals at 80 rpm, you just know someone less athletic will struggle mightily. Or I might struggle if I wanted to stay in zones 2 or 3. I am hoping that most bikes will adopt more reasonable gearing, and the transition to gravel/do-it-all bikes might just be the vehicle. And 13 gears might just be enough for most for a 1x-only solution.
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You lose a lot more due to aerodynamics than the few watts in drive train efficiency. I have an aero road bike on loan (a 3T Strada Due, what an awesome bike), and I am easily a few kms faster on the flats at the same or less effort compared to my endurance road bike. And I don’t attribute the vast majority to tube shapes and the like, but simply to the very aggressive body position. Gravel bikes and quiver killers usually have a much more relaxed geometry, so you will lose your 20+ W right there 
Like you said, if you are very trained, then riding with less trained people could be stressful for them. And not all rides have to be about competing, sometimes it is nice to chill and spend some time with your mates.
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Friction facts say 6 watts loss for 48:10 vs a 53:11 at 250. I’m more curious what that loss looks like at 1000 watts for 20-30 seconds because I don’t know anyone riding in that gear at 250 watts. I wouldn’t care so much about 1-3 watts being in the middle of the cassette, but if I were losing 100 watts across a 30-second sprint, that’s enough to make me stay with a 53 front ring on the road at least. 1x for gravel still strikes me as the ideal, and a 42x10-44 ekar sounds about right.
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That’s a good point, and another reason synthetic tests are tricky.
Out of curiosity, do you know whether pros actually are in their hardest gear when they sprint? On the trainer I usually opt for 50:12, which lets me spin at 120 rpm at 1,000–1,300 W. Sure, pros will laugh at those numbers, but still. Hypothetically, you can reach 65 or 70 km/h in 53:13 and 53:12, respectively (at 120 rpm). If I go for 50:11, I find it too hard to wind up quickly — although I am the opposite of a sprinter, I think 
Just noticed you posted a Strava segment 
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Good catch! Fixed now.
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Below is:
- Top: Ekar with a 38t chainring and the 9-36
- Bottom: a 50/34 with a (Campy) 12-32 cassette (11 speed)
I agree. They didn’t make a big deal about it, but seems pretty clear from this that the smaller cassette is designed for road use.
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The gearing range does seems great for a true mix of gravel and road flexibility. I was riding a lot of flatland gravel earlier this year, and a 40x11-36 Sram 1x worked very well. previously was used to 42 or 40x10-42, and that range works pretty well. Ekar with 42x10-44 on the gravel wheels is nearly identical to the Sram range everyone loves but also leaves the option of true road speed with a 9-36 cassette providing the top gear of 42x9–identical to a 46x10, which is a fast gear.
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Exactly. And it is curious that they do not offer any chain rings smaller than 38. I think there are plenty of people who’d want a smaller gear than 38:9 = 4.22 as their top gear on a bona fide gravel bike. On the other hand, that cassette and that chain ring makes a whole lot of sense on a do-it-all bike where you swap out the wheels if necessary and either go on a road ride, off road or you put on wider tires with no or moderate tread.
If it weren’t for Campagnolo’s shifters, I’d be really tempted.
Really? I know no one has ever ridden these shifters yet, but Campag brifter designs have always been great for me.
Of course, I haven’t tried this incarnation of Campagnolos shift UI, but I have tried a demo bike with a Campy group set and we did not get along. I liked it better than Shimano mechanical, because the brake lever doesn’t swivel side-to-side. I had exact opposite first impression I had with SRAM’s mechanical levers: it literally took me less than a second to get used to that, and I really, really liked it.
I don’t think I would mind the mechanical that much, but I wish they’d released an electronic (wireless as well) version as well.
While I understand that, I think it was smart for Campagnolo to release a mechanical groupset first. Campagnolo is quite expensive and for what it is, Ekar is competitively priced.
This was a rumour when AXS first came out and it’s been discussed again at this year’s Tour. Teams are using non-standard chainrings so that that they don’t have to use the 10 tooth. Movistar are using 54/41 rings on flat stages.
Using smaller chainrings put you at a disadvantage across the full range of gears, not just when you’re in the 10 sprocket.
Mike
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Thanks for the link. So the actual story is that pros use the same chain rings (in terms of tooth count) that they’d use for an 11-speed drive train for marginal gains. (I knew that some pros used a 54/42 chain ring combo on Shimano, and I am sure they have tried others.)
This is much more common on TTs: you don’t put on a 56- or 58-tooth chainring “to go faster” (in the top gear), you do that so that you are in the middle of your cassette for most of the time as that is the most efficient gearing. I wonder, though, why there aren’t TT cassettes and groupsets like there are for mountain bike downhill bikes. Those have fewer gears and are tailored to a purpose.
Out of curiosity, though, it seems to me that it doesn’t make much of a difference whether you are on 11- or 12-speed drive trains. Even a 54:11 is probably too hard a gear for a pro to use for anything but downhill segments and perhaps sprints. (I’m nowhere near a pro, but when I go 50 km/h, I am in my 50:13 or 50:12. And when I sprint on my trainer I’m in 50:12, my 50:11 is too hard to wind up and build speed.) Clearly, a 54:10 will be used even less, but I reckon it might still be useful as an overdrive gear.
I’m resurrecting an old thread, I know, but I thought I’d update it with my impressions of the groupset from today (20k test ride, c.15k on road)::
Setup: 42T chainring, 9-42 cassette; 160/140 front/rear rotors.
- Ergonomically, it’s very good; the hoods fit my hands well, and both shifter levers are easily available from both hoods and drops.
- Shift pressure is perfect; there’s no danger of a ghost shift, but equally you don’t need to force it.
- Downshifts are crisp, positive and sound superb under a bit of pressure. Upshifts while soft pedalling are just a smidge vague – it’s crisper with a little force on the pedals. The upshift lever doesn’t work while braking – that’s bit of a nuisance.
- The ratios work well on and off road; I wasn’t aware of substantial jumps except on 1 long-ish drag/false flat on road, where I sometimes found myself slightly between gears (though I can find that on a 2x11, to be fair). I didn’t find it necessary to explore the extreme ends of the cassette on the test ride.
- The brakes are superb – the best I’ve used; they’re very powerful, have excellent modulation and zero rub. The chain seems very secure across rough-ish ground, though the off-road section wasn’t that demanding, in fairness.
- Overall, the simplicity of the 1x setup was refreshing, and while the feel is very different to Udi2, I did enjoy the crispness and the way the system encourages you to be positive with your shifts. I’m debating on whether a 42T is actually overkill.
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