NEW ERA OF SPEED IN GRAVEL
We may not have made the first gravel bike, but we definitely made the fastest gravel bike. In 2019, Áspero took the world by storm, heralding a "new era of speed in gravel." It was gravel, Cervelo-style. Since then, gravel bikes have grown, fragmented, and started to look a lot like the road and mountain bikes that spawned them, with suspension forks, bolt-ons for…everything, and ever-increasing tire widths.
TRUE TO THE EARLY DAYS
The new Áspero remains true to those early, simpler days of gravel, but with some improvements—a threaded BB shell, neater cable routing, and a UDH-compatible derailleur hanger for those who want to use SRAM's Transmission drivetrains. And it's faster, of course.
We shaved off three watts worth of drag in the redesign process. We also dropped the seat stays to give a bit more compliance out back, and reduced front-end stiffness slightly to make the last hours of a long race less painful.
Between those dropped seat stays, we added in a bit more clearance for mud, too, taking what we learned from R5-CX (and the Unbound mudfest in 2023). It's a lot of seemingly small improvements, but they add up to a lot. The result is a bike that feels a lot like the original Áspero, but is faster, more comfortable, and more versatile.