Marianne Vos took victory on the 2024 Gravel World Championships utilizing a self-inflating tyre system.
Vos beat out favourite Lotte Kopecky in a two-up dash, which crucially, ended on a clean tarmac highway.
Vos, together with different Visma-Lease-a-bike commerce teammates used tyre reinflation gadgets from Dutch firm Gravaa, permitting them to optimise tyre pressures on totally different surfaces all through the race.
(Picture credit score: Future (Fergus Jones))
How does Gravaa’s tyre inflation expertise work?
The power to alter tyre pressures on the fly is one thing that may show extremely helpful in mixed-surface racing. Decrease tyre pressures can yield extra grip when the going will get tough, and oftentimes enhance rolling resistance too by serving to to take in extra of the bumps on the course. Pump the tires again up and, effectively, maybe you possibly can dash a bit bit faster on tarmac…
Clearly then, the expertise lends itself to the likes of gravel racing and races such like Paris-Roubaix – the place the expertise made its first WorldTour debut again in 2022.
The Gravaa works by housing a tiny compressor contained in the wheel hub. Strain build-up is then fed into the tyres through an electronically managed Presta valve, which permits riders to deflate and inflate tyres whereas driving alongside.
Visma-lease-a-bike riders from totally different nations had been seen utilizing the Gravaa setup.
(Picture credit score: Future (Fergus Jones))
Clearly you possibly can’t match a workshop-sized compressor, operating off mains energy inside a wheel hub although, so Gravaa has give you an answer that does not require exterior energy and might match inside a wheel hub.
Gravaa makes use of a kinetic compressor system that makes use of the rotation of the wheel to pressurize air from the environment. Talking to Biking Weekly, Gertjan van Ginderen, Founding father of Gravaa stated “The speed of inflation is proportional to distance travelled. When operating a 42mm tyre, the air stress might be elevated by round 0.8 bar (11.5 PSI) per kilometer.”
Tyre stress is all managed from these small buttons on the handlebars.
(Picture credit score: Future (Fergus Jones))
The system is fully managed from the handlebars on two small blip shifter-like buttons that Vos had mounted on the within of the drops – the place you’d generally anticipate to see dash shifters. Gravaa’s hubs talk wirelessly receiver mounted within the handlebar finish, which in flip connects wirelessly to the controls on the handlebars.
Vos used Vittoria Dugast TLR cyclocross tires.
(Picture credit score: Future (Fergus Jones))
The place Vos’ setup did change from a few of her commerce teammates, nevertheless, was in tyre selection. Versus the a lot wider 38 to 42mm Vitorria Terreno Dry tyres we noticed on a few of her fellow Visma-lease-a-bike commerce teammates, Vos opted for a Vitorria Dugast cyclocross tire in a 33mm width.
Curiously, we might see what appeared very very like tubular glue on the facet partitions of those tyres, although Van Ginderen assured us that the wheels had been certainly designed to be used with tubeless tyres.
How did it change the race?
The 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships are positioned in Belgium, with the course weaving its method via the Forests of Brabant, earlier than ending in Leuven – the place the World Championship highway race was held again in 2021.
In whole, simply 56% of the course was technically on gravel, with the remaining being made up with a mixture of tarmac and cobble roads.
And it is this mixture of surfaces that poses a difficult query to riders and mechanics – what tyre stress ought to be used?
Tyre pressures are a sizzling subject at any blended floor race.
(Picture credit score: Future (Andy Jones))
Whereas decrease tyre pressures may present extra grip on free gravel, it might additionally make accelerations slower on clean surfaces – paramount when the end line is on tarmac. Earlier than the beginning, we requested quite a lot of mechanics what tyre stress they might be utilizing, however they remained tight-lipped.
Vos launched her dash with 300m to go, and Kopecky was by no means in a position to come round.
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
Vos then again, didn’t have this dilemma and as an alternative was in a position to improve tyre pressures on the smoother surfaces and reduce them for technical sections. Vos did appear to distance Kopecky ever-so-slightly via quite a lot of corners on the trickier elements of the course, but it surely’s tough to say whether or not this was all the way down to bike dealing with, or expertise.
What is way safer to deduce, is that Vos could effectively have entered the ultimate 500 meters with larger tyre stress than Kopecky. The upper stress, in idea, ought to have been quicker to dash on, which might have aided Vos’ last 300m kick.
Was it the successful margin? In fact, we’ll by no means know, but it surely’s actually an fascinating piece of expertise, and one we expect we’ll see a bit bit extra of this weekend.
