When someone offers you more comfort and more speed on the bike, you don’t say no. But what if it comes with a bunch of caveats, including more weight and more expense? Perhaps you’d still take it. But I’m going to confess to emitting an inward sigh when I saw that 32-inch wheels were now, officially ‘a thing’ (just a minor thing, admittedly) in the gravel world.
Displayed at the Sea Otter Classic in California – round one of the Life Time Grand Prix and key industry expo date – the outsized hoops purport to offer more compliance thanks to a bigger contact patch, as well as more momentum and thus more speed.
Watch Cycling Weekly’s Video: 32″ Wheels Are Definitely Coming
How much of my stuck-in-the-mud attitude is rooted in the fact I cut my cycling teeth in the Eighties – the decade which boasts the most beautiful bikes ever made – and I secretly want them all to stay like that, I don’t know. I’m also not entirely averse to change and, I imagine, like most of us, I appreciate the better braking, more ergonomic geometry, light weight and excellent tyres of modern machines.
But to survive and thrive, cycling needs to be accessible, whether we’re talking gravel, road, mountain biking or anything else. The more big equipment decisions a new rider has to make in order to enter the sport, the harder it becomes.
If the 32in-wheel-friendly bike frames debuted at Sea Otter are anything to go by, there is one key facet that’s likely to keep this new size relatively niche: the wheels are so big, you’ll need a bit of height to ride them.