Header Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

In most sports, getting within touching distance of an object so critical in winning a world championship would be impossible. A football from the world cup. A race car from Formula 1. A pair of running shoes from the 100m sprint. It’s pretty unlikely you’d be allowed anywhere near them unless you’re a proper VIP. But cycling seems to be different. We got the chance to get up and personal with Matej Mohoric’s gold medal winning bike from the 2023 UCI Gravel World Championships and it’s something you could do as a member of the gravel loving public too, should you wish to!

Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

patina (ˈpætɪnə)

NOUN

Word forms: plural -nas

1. a film of oxide formed on the surface of a metal, esp the green oxidation of bronze or copper 

2. any fine layer on a surface e.g. a patina of frost

3. the sheen on a surface that is caused by much handling

(taken from the Collins English Dictionary)

Strictly speaking, patina is supposed to apply to bronze or copper, rather than “nano matrix” carbon fibre, but when you look at Matej Mohoric’s gold medal winning bike, patina is the word that springs to mind. There are encrusted dribbles of energy drink visible on the down tube. The wheels are rimed with a gossamer-thin layer of Veneto’s finest limestone “polveroso” (dust). Spittles of mud are caked the underside of the downtube. Jockey wheels have picked up a gelatinous mixture of wax lube and trail muck. Over the course of 169 km, Matej’s bike picked up some unique souvenirs and the fact that the bike is on display exactly as it was when he crossed the finish line makes it even more special.

Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

Once you look beyond the grime, you start to notice the details that make his bike unique, but the back-story is also worth knowing about. “Matej only rode the bike two or three times before he raced at the worlds and this was his first ever gravel race” Merida’s Andrea Lodder told us. “The bike was technically still under embargo when he won and it wasn’t officially launched until a week later” she continued. Having your new bike adorned with a UCI gold medal isn’t a bad way to give it some extra pre-launch publicity we suspect! 

Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

Despite being 1.85m tall, Matej chose to run a size small frame during his gold medal winning ride. That explains the incredible saddle-to-bar drop and the fact that he also ran a 140mm stem. His choice of groupset might like slightly controversial, Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 rather than the gravel-focussed GRX, but when you consider that his ‘day job’ is as a professional road racer for Team Bahrain Victorius, his choice makes more sense. Matej ran a stock Dura-Ace 9200 12-speed set-up with a 34-50 chainset (without a power meter), an 11-34 cassette and Dura Ace SPD-SL pedals.

The only obvious ‘mod’ that we could spot was the additional of a small rubber band on the rear mech hanger, presumably to minimise the risk of the Di2 cable from being dragged into the cassette during the bumpier sections of the course. You might wonder why this was necessary, but the simple answer is likely to be that the Dura-Ace rear mech doesn’t have the same clutch function as the GRX equivalent, so it might be more prone to movement on rough ground.

“Matej carried Muc-Off tubeless plugs in both sides of his handlebars” Andrea told us. She continued “He ran Continental Terra Speed tyres (in a 40mm width) and they were fitted with rim strips and tubeless sealant.” Unlike when he is racing on the road, in the Gravel World Championships, outside of the official tech zones, there is no mechanical assistance available, so Matej fitted a small seatpack containing Joe’s No Flats tubeless sealant, co2 pump head and tyre levers. In his jersey pocket he also carried a spare tube “to get to it asap if he needed it.” Again with self-help in mind, Matej’s wheels were fitted with thru-axle levers to aid speedy removal and refitting – there aren’t any highly-trained mechanics wielding battery-powered tools for speedy wheel removal in gravel racing.

Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

Each year at the Tour of Flanders and the Paris-Roubaix, some teams feature incredibly slick looking stem graphics with detailed information about the parcours, but for Matej, an (admittedly neatly written) homemade stem graphic sufficed. Written on what appears to be masking tape, the graphic displays his feeding & hydration strategy – a simple aide memoire for the heat of competition, with a distance marker and a symbol for a crossed knife&fork or a bottle. Talking of which, there is a dust-coated bottle still mounted in the bottle cage on Matej’s frame. We hope for the sake of humanity that it was emptied before it was put on display. The risk of an alien life-form breeding inside the fetid atmosphere of a used race ‘bidon’ would probably make a public health official visibly shudder…. 

When viewed from the front, Matej’s cockpit set-up looks slightly unusual. It’s common to see gravel riders cant their brake levers inwards and in fact, with the latest generation of GRX Di2, the lever hoods have been designed with this exact fact in mind. It looks as though Matej’s right hand lever is canted inwards significantly more than the left hand side though, so we assume this was caused by the minor crash he suffered with only 3.5 km to go to the finish line, rather than any particular desire to have one lever set up at a dramatically different angle to the other.

On the big day itself, despite only undertaking the minimum number of acclimatisation and set-up rides in advance of the race itself, Matej stormed to victory with a 43 second winning margin over his nearest competitor. This can't all be down to 'just' his choice of bike, but it's certainly good evidence of the Silex's racing pedigree.

Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

With the 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships taking place on a very different parcours and being held in a potentially cold & wet Belgium, rather than a hot and dusty northern Italy, it will be interesting to see whether Matej can repeat his gold medal winning ride this year.  

Image courtesy of Merida Bikes

If you fancy seeing Matej Mohoric’s bike for yourself, it’s currently on display at the Shimano Experience Centre in Valkenburg.

If you’d like to find out more about Merida’s Silex gravel bikes, head over to their website.