Originally Posted by
grolby
The differences between cyclocross and gravel bikes are greatly exaggerated. There’s a lot
of overlap and gravel bikes essentially developed as an evolution of cyclocross bikes. On average CX bikes will have a higher BB, shorter wheelbase and slightly steeper head angles. But again, there’s overlap and this is on average. Cyclocross bike handling is still pretty sedate compared to a road bike.
With that said, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to buy a rim brake bike these days. Plus, Euro cyclocross geometry in particular, which a Colnago will have, is going to be about as extreme as it gets relative to a modern gravel bike.
Oh boy. How old are we talking about, here? Truly old CX bikes took skinny tires cause they were literally road bikes with cantilever posts brazed on. In the 90’s, everyone raced on tubulars and tires wider than about 30 mm just didn’t exist. By 2010 though, the UCI still allowed for tires up to 700x35 and bikes of the time readily accommodated tires that size and had done so for several years. I’ve personally never owned a cyclocross bike that couldn’t fit 40C tires and I’ve had four or so of them. My experience isn’t exhaustive by a long shot, but CX bikes fit up to about 40C tires typically, not rarely.
I kind of object to the claim that all of this is because “the people who designed them were silly.” It was a different time and cyclocross bikes evolved over time as about the most specialized race bikes out there. Off-the-shelf cyclocross bikes only became a thing in about the mid-90’s when brands began to jump on them as basically the equivalent of gravel bikes
today. That is, a general-purpose sport-touring type bike. And that’s when they got lots of eyelets and generous tire clearance.
”Generous tire clearance” meant something different then, too. People act as though high-quality, fast-rolling 40C+ tires have been around forever, but they’re a super new phenomenon. Back in the day, even by 2010, almost all tires of that size were trash. Fine for touring, but building a performance bike around big tires was a genuine leap because designing a bike around a component that literally doesn’t exist is kind
of hard to do.
Agree with all of this. I have an 8 year old Cannondale CX bike with cantilever brakes. It was designed around 33mm tires, but also like most CX bikes had tons of extra room for mud clearance. With 33mm installed it has at least 12mm of clearance, so 40mm would likely fit (I've never tried it). My brand new Cannondale SuperX is a pure CX race bike, UCI world cup ready, and it fits 42mm.
Both of these bikes have race-oriented geometry (the SuperX is more extreme than the CAADX), but both also make excellent gravel bikes. In terms of geometry and handling, the differences between these CX bikes and the gravel bikes I've been on are very minimal. I've never found my CX bikes to feel unstable at speed or lacking for comfort (particularly my carbon SuperX) over long distances, but also I'm talking about normal rides, not 300 mile gravel races over extreme terrain. The biggest difference I've encountered is gearing. Modern CX bikes typically run narrow-range 1x setups whereas gravel bikes have gobs of gear range out of the box.
People forget that the whole gravel scene started with guys racing CX bikes (most of which were aluminum) and they were winning these insane gravel events where the majority of participants were riding XC style MTBs that proved to be much slower. The gravel bikes that were born out of that were specifically aimed at improving the long-distance gravel race capability, and focused on comfort and compliance while still being really fast.
Further evidence of the overlap is that you can find racers at the top levels of UCI Cyclocross on bikes like the Cervelo Aspero, Orbea Terra, Santa Cruz Stigmata and Pivot Vault, all of which are marketed as "gravel race" (or at a minimum as dual-purpose CX/Gravel race) bikes and have a far more minimal and race-oriented approach to their design than some of the more gravel-touring bikes that are also on the market.