Gravel has a predictability problem

There was a time, not long ago, when the winner of a major gravel race was a mystery until the final kilometres. It was a beautiful chaos, a discipline defined by busted derailleurs, bonks born of ambition, and alliances forged in dusty desperation.

The winner wasn't always the strongest, but the most resilient, the luckiest, the one who navigated the beautiful, brutal anarchy of it all just a little bit better than everyone else. It was a bet on chaos over calculus.

But watch Keegan Swenson (Specialized Off-Road) dispatch the field at SBT GRVL 2026, and we're forced to confront a creeping, uncomfortable truth: gravel has a predictability problem. The chaos is being tamed.

In its place, a metronomic, almost monotonous excellence is turning the sport’s marquee events into processions. We are losing the very thing that made us fall in love with it.

The Inevitability Machine

This isn't an argument against greatness. Swenson is a phenomenal athlete, a rider so dialled into the demands of long-distance gravel that he often seems to be operating on a different plane. His performance at the event is a testament to a staggering level of consistency and power.

The conventional wisdom pushes back on this, arguing it is just the natural evolution of a sport. The cream rises, professionalism takes hold, and dynasties are built. Why should gravel be any different from the road, where Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard have carved the Grand Tours into their own private fiefdom?

The answer is yes, but not like this. Not when the plot is given away before the opening credits. Gravel’s unique selling proposition was its unpredictability, the antidote to the WorldTour’s suffocating control, where races are often neutralised by team tactics and radio-controlled efforts.

Gravel was supposed to be a return to something more elemental, where an individual’s grit and resourcefulness mattered more than the team bus behind them. It was punk rock. Now it’s a stadium tour with a setlist you know by heart.

When Swenson lines up, the question is no longer if he will win, but how. The race becomes a narrative about who can hang on the longest, a contest for the podium's other steps. It drains the tension, the very oxygen of sporting drama, and the race ceases to be a question, becoming a statement instead.

Losing the Spirit

What's lost is more than just suspense. It's the spirit of participation, the foundational myth of gravel that anyone with enough grit had a shot. Of course, that was never entirely true at the pointy end, but it felt true.

The pros and the amateurs shared the same track, the same hardships, the same possibility of a race-ruining puncture 100 kilometres from anywhere. That shared experience is diluted when the front of the race becomes a hermetically sealed exhibition for a handful of untouchable superstars.

The sense of a common enterprise fractures. It becomes two separate events on the same course: a professional race for the win, and a mass-participation ride for everyone else. The magic was in the illusion that they were one and the same.

The dominance of a few riders accelerates this professionalisation in a way that can feel alienating. It attracts bigger sponsors and more controlled team structures, all designed to mitigate risk and ensure the favourite delivers. In short, it rebuilds the very system that gravel was meant to be an escape from.

We fled the controlled environment of the WorldTour only to find ourselves methodically building a new one out on the dirt roads.

There are no easy solutions. You cannot legislate against talent or penalise a rider for being too good. But the scene can, and should, ask itself some hard questions.

Are the courses varied enough? Do the formats favour a specific physiological engine to the exclusion of all others? Is there a way to reintroduce the element of chance, of chaos, that made the early days so compelling?

Perhaps this is all just a necessary, if painful, phase of maturation. All sports have their eras of dominance, and they all survive them. But gravel felt different. It promised something more, a wilder heart.

To see that heart slowly tamed, win by predictable win, feels like a profound loss. We came for the adventure, for the thrilling uncertainty of a long day on bad roads. We can only hope the road fights back, and one day soon, delivers a result that feels less like a coronation and more like a surprise.