If you were about to launch a brand new (and highly anticipated) gravel bike aimed squarely at racers and then one of your sponsored riders wins the UCI World Gravel Championships on a prototype of the new bike just a few days before the official unveiling, you would be pretty happy, wouldn’t you? In the search for the gravel Holy Grail of fast, light, stiff, comfortable and adaptable, we suspect the addition of some world champion stripes to their new bike led to quite a few celebrations at Canyon this week.
Image courtesy of Emmie Collinge
When Kasia Niewiadoma crossed the finish line in first place in the pro women’s category at the 2023 UCI Gravel World Championships and raised her bike above her head in celebration, you can imagine some champagne corks popping in Canyon’s HQ in Koblenz, Germany. Not only had she triumphed over a field packed with the world’s best gravel and road racers, but she did so on the new Canyon Grail gravel race bike, scheduled for its public unveiling a few days later.
The new Grail hasn’t exactly been kept under wraps in the latter half of 2023. In fact, Canyon sponsored racers have won an impressive amount of top-level gravel races on the new Grail this year including Unbound, the European Gravel Championships, the German and Belgian national gravel championships and the Canyon sponsored FNLD GRVL. Obviously keeping a new bike secret when it has been used to win so many events hasn’t been easy (or even possible) and there have been spy-shots around on the internet for months. But this was obviously part of a cunning plan on behalf of Canyon, as the raison d’etre of the new Grail is just one thing – to be fast. So having their new top secret gravel race bike being seen by the world on the top step of gravel race podiums was exactly the kind of publicity they were after.
The new Grail promises to be 9.1 watts faster at 45 kph compared to outgoing model and those are the kind of figures that topflight racers would practically bite their arm off to be able to access. The issue of course is that just making a gravel bike fast isn’t enough if you want it to sell in a crowded marketplace, rather than just give it to your sponsored riders. It needs to also be comfortable, light, stiff, adaptable, not to mention be good looking and at the right price point. There’s also a good dollop of history to be considered too. When Canyon first launched the Grail back in 2018 its looks alone generated enough publicity to make Canyon’s PR team extremely happy. Double decker bars, a split seatpost and a stem which was mounted level to the top tube all created pages and pages of copy and images and Canyon were obviously a little wary about dumping all this history into the waste bin when launching the new Grail.
The first generation of the Grail is insanely comfortable, while also blisteringly fast so, the latest generation has some pretty big shoes to fill. Despite at first glance ditching the comfort-enhancing double decker bars and flexible VCLS seatpost Canyon are promising that the new bike is still comfortable, it’s just that now comfort is slightly lower down the pecking order of must-have characteristics. The new bike will come with one piece “double drop bars” and a new snappily named SP0072 Comfortpost, both of which promise comfort but also improved aerodynamics. It is designed as a gravel race bike after all.
The new design isn’t short on utility though. There’s a built-in downtube storage bay on the top two models. All three models come with a Fidlock-based mounting system for a framebag which sits within the top tube/head tube/downtube junction. Canyon have also designed easily mountable/unmountable “fork sleeves” which push onto each fork leg, allowing up to 3kgs of load to be bolted on, but without the need to beef-up the fork legs by building in full-time mounting points. There’s also a set of new “defend fast” mudguards, custom made for the new Grail and perfect for anyone living outside of California.
There is one aspect of the new Grail which might at first glance at least seem a little odd and that’s tyre clearance. Although Canyon already sell a bikepacking-inspired gravel bike in the form of their Grizl which will take 50mm tyres, most pundits assumed that the new Grail would also get a boost in tyre clearance. But no. The boyracer characteristics of the new Grail were still the number one priority. Pro-level racers eschew the smaller chainring sizes that us mere mortals run and they more-or-less dictated that the new Grail be capable of working with 52 tooth road chainrings. This determined the maximum possible clearance for the tyres, so the new Grail follows the route of the old one with a maximum clearance of 42mm and bikes being supplied with 40mm tyres fitted.
Image courtesy of Emmie Collinge
Whether you have aspirations of being the next Gravel World Champion, are a gravel QOM/KOM hunter, or just want to be faster than your friends, the new Canyon Grail should prove to be a fast and comfortable addition to your “is this my next gravel bike?” list.
Prices start at €2699 for the base level Grail CF SL and go out a slightly more eye watering €10000 for the limited edition top-of-the-range GRVL DZZL version of the Grail CFR. Full details can be found on the Canyon website.