The gap between gravel and cross-country mountain bikes is smaller than ever, with many gravel bikes utilising frame designs similar to MTBs and even incorporating suspension systems.
Some riders at this year's Leadville 100, an iconic MTB race in the Rocky Mountains, were even riding cross-country mountain bikes equipped with drop bars.
Promising the control of a mountain bike with the aero advantages of a drop-bar setup, the Leadville 100 was won for the fourth time by Keegan Swenson, who rode a drop-bar equipped Santa Cruz Highball hardtail with a RockShox SID Ultimate Flight Attendant fork and a combination of SRAM XX SL AXS Transmission married to the brand’s Red AXS shifters.
Earlier in the year, we saw Ulrich Bartholmoes’ drop-bar BMC Twostroke at the Traka in Girona, featuring a RockShox SID Select Plus with 100mm of travel.
Are drop-bar mountain bikes the future of gravel tech and go-fast MTB racing or a flash-in-the-pan fad? Let’s look at some of the reasons why racers – and particularly racers like Swenson who compete at the sharp end of both gravel and MTB events – are moving to drop-bar mountain bikes.
XC or gravel?
While Olympic-style cross-country mountain biking has become more technical in recent years, gravel racing has taken the place of traditional marathon cross-country racing on a wider scale.
While the Leadville 100 is historically a mountain bike race, due to long (albeit non-technical) sections of doubletrack and dirt tracks, many gravel racers have started to target the event because its length means it isn’t a good match for dedicated XCO racers.
Gravel racer Dylan Johnson is one of those riders.
He rode to a 10th-place finish at Unbound 2024 – the world's most important gravel event – on a heavily modified Felt Breed, the brand's gravel race bike.
Johnson is a Felt-sponsored rider, but the brand doesn’t produce a mountain bike. This meant he had free rein to pick a bike for the Leadville 100, settling on a drop-bar equipped Allied BC40 full-suspension mountain bike.
Elsewhere, Trek-sponsored gravel veteran Russell Finsterwald was seen riding a Trek Supercaliber with drop handlebars at Leadville.
All racers using drop bars are SRAM-sponsored or affiliated, likely because the brand’s wireless AXS ecosystem enables road shifters to be paired with mountain bike derailleurs to create mullet drivetrains.
This same functionality is available on Shimano Di2 components, but many professional Shimano athletes prefer to use mechanical mountain bike derailleurs, which aren’t compatible with its drop-bar shifters.
Tributes to Tomac
It’s not the first time we’ve seen drop-bar handlebars on mountain bikes, with the image of John Tomac taking victories on his Raleigh Signature and Yeti C-26 burnt into cycling’s collective consciousness.
In the more modern era, we’ve seen ex-professional grand tour and gravel racer, Laurens ten Dam, using drop bars on a Specialized Epic World Cup for his 1,050km Transcordilleras FKT.
When speaking to BikeRadar, ten Dam described using the ‘improvised setup’ to increase comfort levels on the 18-hour-a-day race.
What are the benefits of a drop bars on a mountain bike?
Compared to a conventional mountain bike flat bar, drop handlebars give you more positions to rest during long events. This can help avoid aches and pains that may develop from riding with your hands locked in one position.
They also reduce your frontal area, with the drop portion of the bar usually positioning your hands lower than is possible with flat bars – even with an extremely inverted stem.
This gives riders an aerodynamic advantage on high-speed, non-technical parts of the course, which make up the majority of the Leadville 100.
While more capable than gravel bikes, cross-country mountain bikes are also incredibly efficient, especially on chunkier terrain where larger tyres and suspension provide better traction and faster rolling speeds.
Even compared to more extreme gravel bike setups with gravel suspension forks, the descending prowess of modern cross-country mountain bikes is unmatched due to the requirement needed in XCO racing.
Will we see more drop-bar mountain bikes?
With Keegan Swenson’s success, it seems logical we will see a higher adoption of the drop-bar setup in cross-country marathon events, depending on their technicality.
There seems to be a sweet spot, where gravel bikes aren’t quite capable enough, flat bars aren’t aero or comfortable enough and drop-bar mountain bikes prevail.
Perhaps John Tomac really was ahead of the game.
