Originally Posted by
HTupolev
This issue doesn't have anything specifically to do with gravel, gravel just puts a bit of additional pressure on it. Insufficient low gearing has been a blind spot in road cycling fashion since the dawn of time. Rivendell Reader 34 is fourteen years old but still very interesting, look at page 26
here: Kozo Shimano admits that 53-39 was standard on recreational bikes mostly because the perception from the company leaders was that cyclists would want cranks that didn't look like Lance's cranks, and also admits that he had a better experience on smaller rings.
In other words, he knew that gearing was a problem, but assumed that fixing the problem could be a marketability issue.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't find the lack of standard options for smaller rings to be good evidence that gearing isn't a significant hindrance here.
I guess I don't see the gravel market as being something that caters towards racers or that persona, which is different from the road side of things in a lot of ways. They picked gearing range choices based on where they think the majority of the marketplace would be interested in. Its not like they don't have the capability to do otherwise since they essentially just changed the pull ratio and cage lengths of their MTB designs to work with road shifters. They have the cassettes already, if they thought there was a huge market and people would be happier with 46-30 11-42 they could have put that out instead