This is gravel. You cannot do this in a road race with all the cars,

the team director's cars and neutral cars. This is gravel. You can do such foolish things.

The gravel revolution didn't happen overnight. It's taken more than a century for new technology to help

bridge the gap between road racing's routes and the relatively modern trend of seeking out

rough terrain to create more visually exciting and dynamic racing. Look back at photos of the Tour

de France and D'Uro d'It Italia as recently as the 1950s and 60s before the world was completely covered in ribbons

of tarmac and you'll see the mountain passes were gravel surfaces. Relatively hard pack gravel

but rough loose stuff nonetheless.

Riemannes, in the last chain rings have helped to bridge that gap between riding fast on the road and being able to veer off into the wilderness without it feeling like a different discipline.

And a whole scene has emerged, gravel, with the United States leading the way.

Ice creams are good. Just jealous ice cream red bull.

Ice creams are melted. In a way, it combines the early days of road racing, the endurance, the self-sufficiency,

the privateer spirit, the sheer audacity of the first tour de France, with the mountain bike

boom of the 1980s, with its independence, the freedom, the technological embrace and the afterparties.

And as gravel has gained popularity, the relatively stayed world of professional road racing

has cast envious glances in its direction and has embraced gravel too.

This month sees the 19th edition of Strada Bianca, no longer a newfangled Curio, but a staple of the

classic calendar.

The Giro and the tour have both gone off-road, smaller gravel events have enjoyed a boost

in popularity, and the UCI has created

a standalone Gravel World Championship.

You can see the bike slow down and Van der Poe and Vermeish push on round that corner

...