Are all road bikes all-road bikes?

Is the bike industry trying to sell you the same bike twice?

- Joe Baker

It used to be oh so simple, just road bikes and mountain bikes. In the road category, we were limited to two faithful options: a winter bike and a race bike. Cyclo-cross existed too, in a muddy no-man’s land, but there was little mixing of the on- and off-road riding genres.

Then came endurance and aero bikes, then gravel. The latter has been a buzzword for the last half-decade, and for good reason. Emphasis on more casual riding, enjoying the outdoors and getting away from traffic resonates with the masses. It’s fair to say that the gravel genre has sculpted the landscape of the cycling industry in recent years.

Walk into a bike shop today, and you will be bombarded with myriad options – road race bikes, road endurance bikes, all-road bikes and gravel exploration bikes to name just a few. Yet the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. After all, most share much of the same DNA – two-wheeled, humanpowered machines equipped with disc brakes and wide(r) tyres.

With many of the best race bikes on the market, such as the Specialized Tarmac SL8, now supporting up to 35mm rubber – that’s 2mm wider than competition cyclo-cross tyres – cynics will claim that the new all-road bikes category is just an industry ploy to sell you more bikes. But is that the case?