Originally Posted by
HTupolev
Probably a large majority of people who ride any kind of mountainous stuff. In my area, we've got plenty of gravel climbs that average 12% or more over a mile at a time. And check out this gorgeous road that one of my friends recently found:
I suppose "need" is a strong word, but if it's a question of what's
optimal, I actually think that most road bikes in hilly areas should come with ratios of 1:1 or lower, whether intended for gravel or otherwise. Even in the paved lowlands around here, I see tons of people badly bottomed out on their gearing during climbs, and people avoiding very fun roads simply because the gradients get steep. That's awful.
Ideally, common chainring combinations would span a much wider range than they currently do. From what I can tell, a majority of people on road bikes have very little use for the top-end on modern road bikes. For the weaker riders, a 42-26 or even 40-24 would offer adequate top-end in a 1x-plus-granny scheme, while permitting a comfortably tight-spaced cassette.
My experience with mtbers and other gravel riders is that a very small fraction will want to ride that type of terrain whatever their gearing. You still need to be able to put out a lot of power to able to get up something like that. All the hard gravel rides have like 5-10% of the participation numbers compared to the easier less hilly rides, and we have lots of mounatains here in the PNW. To me shimano is targeting the 90%+ of the market, the other 5-10% of us have to make do with some tinkering, for example I use an rx800 rd with a 50/34 11-40 with no modification at all for gravel. Could easily go to 46/30 11-42, but still only round up 1-2 other racers to go somewhere that type of gearing is even needed