- So last week we published our "Rigs Of The Tour Divide" series. And over the past week, I ended up taking the
first 100 submissions and plugging them into a spreadsheet to get a clear picture
of these specific rigs. So in this video, we're gonna
take a deep dive into the data to find out where people are from, the types of bikes, tires, and
cargo setups they're using, their gear choices, and plenty more. And I think you'll probably
be pretty surprised about some of our findings. All right, let's get into it. (upbeat music) Before we dive into
the 100 rigs I studied, I wanted to share the overall numbers of this year's Tour Divide. So according to trackleaders.com,
225 folks have signed up and unfortunately there are
far fewer women than men, with only 21 women, highlighting
a significant disparity. The age distribution is also
really interesting here. So the 30s age group had the
most participants last year, but this year the 50 to 59
age group was more popular with 23.6% of the field,
the 30s was next with 22.8%, followed by the 60s at 21.1%. Additionally, there was
a handful of 70-year-olds and one participant under 20. Actually, they're 15-years-old,
which is quite impressive. I don't even remember
what I was doing at 15, but I'm sure that they will
not forget this experience. It's pretty impressive. All right, so over the
years, the Tour Divide, yeah, it's truly become a diverse race, maybe the most diverse bike
packing race out there, attracting participants
from all over the world. And it's no surprise
that the United States is well represented with 131 individuals coming from the States, the
most of which was Colorado, followed by California but
34 states were represented. Outside of the United States there were 92 participants
from 21 different countries, most notably New Zealand had
21 individuals, Canada had 19, Australia at 15, and there
were 12 folks from the UK. There were also folks from
the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Finland, and
the Czech Republican, and all over the globe. Among the information I
gathered from the 100 rigs, 77 are considered rookies, meaning they've never pedaled
the Tour Divide before, there were also 10
individuals who had stated that they raced previously
but have not finished, and 13 veterans who are
returning, a few of whom have actually completed
the race more than once which is always awesome to see, but again, a lot of rookies in this group. So before we move along, I
just wanna take a quick moment to let you all know that this
video is supported in part by Tailfin. Tailfin designs and engineers technical bike packing equipment for almost any kind of adventure. Innovation and quality are at the heart of what makes them tick and their constant strive to
create better performing gear means that you can just
focus on enjoying the ride. They offer a range of options
for hauling your gear, whether you're tackling the Tour Divide or just escaping for an overnighter. So for more on Tailfin, be sure to click on the card
in the top right corner, or you can also follow the
link in the description below. All right, so let's talk about the rigs usually one of the most
interesting talking points among racers and, of
course, duh, watchers. This year was very similar to last year, but there were also some notable changes. In total 45 bike brands were represented and 63 different types of bikes were used. Just like last year, the Salsa Cutthroat was the most popular with 19% of participants riding it. The next most popular category was custom or homemade
bikes with six rigs, five of which were flat bar bikes. And then here's a rundown
of the remaining bikes, a bunch from Trek and Specialized
and a variety of others. All right, so diving a bit deeper here, over half of the bikes
were made of carbon fiber, 29% titanium, 12 were steel, and 6% were made out of aluminum. So comfort is clearly a
priority for many participants as over half of the riders were using some sort of
suspension, roughly 52%, while 42% had rigid forks, and six participants lined up
with a full suspension bike. All right, so wrapping
up our bikes portion, the preference for flat versus drop bars was basically evenly split with
54 bikes featuring flat bars and 46 featuring drop bars. And for kicks here, I
actually checked to see the difference between materials
and drop and flat bars, and the biggest difference was that there were 22 titanium flat bars and only seven titanium drop bars. Oh, and I almost forgot, only 14 bikes were without arrow bars, so that makes 86% of folks using these little
couches for your forearms. Yeah, you gotta love it. All right, so it's drivetrain time, and the results were pretty
similar to last year. SRAM was clearly the most
trusted drivetrain last year and it continues to dominate this year with 61% of participants using SRAM. This was followed by Shimano
at 28% and Pinion at 3%, which is an increase from last year, and Rohloff also had one bike. Additionally, seven participants
were single speed riders. You can just scroll through the list and you'll see a whole lot of 1x setups. And given SRAMs preference for 1x setups, it's not surprising that
there were 71 1x12 drivetrains and 15 1x11 drivetrains,
and that one 1x14 Rohloff. So that's 87% of the bikes
equipped with 1x drivetrains. There were also five
bikes with 2x drivetrains featuring an 8, 10, and
then three 11 speed setups. The seven single speed bikes had various kind of gear ratios, there were three with
32x17, two with 34x18, one with 38x19, and one with 42x20. We also gathered data on
chainring sizes this year at your request from rigs of last year, and the most popular
chainring size was 32 teeth used by 31 bikes, followed
by 36 teeth and 38 teeth. As expected, the flat bar bikes typically use the smaller rings while drop bar bikes used larger rings. Finally, in terms of electronic shifting, SRAM also leads this category. Like last year no bike in this group were equipped with Shimano Di2, all 31 participants
using electronic shifting were equipped with SRAM AXS 1x system, with many of those being
the new Eagle transmission. Of the electronic bikes, 19 had drop bars and 12 had flat bars. All right, so let's get into
some tires and wheel sizes. Ooh, so it's no surprise, 29 inch wheels are the
most popular, again. 91% of riders are using them and only 9% using 27.5 inch wheels. All right, so I tried to
break down the categories that would maybe help evenly
distribute the widths, but I couldn't. The results are definitely telling here. So the 2.2 to 2.25 category
was the most common used by 63% of riders, followed by 2.3 to 2.35,
which was only at 12%, and then 11% were using tires
in the 2.1 to 2.15 inch range. So this means that 86% of riders were using tires between
2.1 and 2.35 inches. In terms of tire brands,
Vittoria dominated with 46 riders using their tires, followed by Maxxis at 18, and Rene Herse rounding
out the top three at 14. Specifically, the Vittoria
Mezcal was overwhelmingly popular with 45 of the 46 Vittoria
users choosing this tire. The second most common tire,
actually, this was a tie, Maxxis Ikon and the Continental Race King each used by 11 riders. Overall, 10 tire brands were represented with a total of 23 different tire models. All right, so let's talk about cargo next. And while I think this is always
kind of an exciting topic, and we've seen significant
changes over the last few years, especially with the
resurgence of the rear rack. So this year, 47% of the rigs were equipped with some type of rear rack with a majority, 28
using the Tailfin system, Tailfin AeroPack. There were also five
Old Man Mountain racks and various others including custom racks. As for seat packs, well 52%
of the riders were using them. The most popular brand
was Revelate Designs with 21 riders using their packs, followed by Apidura with seven, and Porcelain Rocket, now
basically Rockgeist with four. There were 20 different seat
pack and 10 unique rack setups, plus one person was using a large trailer instead of any rear storage. Well, that's rear storage,
but they're. Yeah, you get it. Anyways, so regarding brand consistency, there were only 15 bikes
using the same brand for all of their gear. Of these seven were using
Revelate Designs bags, and while some were sponsored
athletes, others were not. All right, so I'm also always curious about using cargo on your fork or not and this year it was pretty evenly split. In fact, evenly split
with half of the riders loading their fork with
some sort of cargo, be it water bottles or something else, and the other half not
loading anything on there. All right, so wrapping up with some random but pretty
interesting findings here. There were 73 riders
using clipless systems, 16 using flats, and 11
using a hybrid pedal that are basically clipless on one side and flats on the other. Despite the rise of powerful and lightweight
cache batteries, dynamo hubs remain very popular with 68% of riders using a dynamo hub, mostly paired with
dynamo-specific lighting. And most riders were using
a rigid seatpost, 72, while 14 bikes had dropper posts and another 14 were using some
sort of suspension seatposts from the likes of Cane Creek or Redshift. And although I didn't ask specifically, 44 riders ended up sharing
their navigation choice and the most popular was
the Garmin Edge 1040 Solar used by 13 riders, followed by the Wahoo ELEMNT ROAM with 10, and there was one person using paper maps. Yeah, Bob would love that. Absolutely. All right, so that wraps
it up for this year. So what do you all think
about these numbers? Does anything kind of stand out to you? Is there a specific set that you would like to
see included next year? Let me know in the comment section below. And as always, thank you
all so much for watching. If you like what you saw in this video and wanna see more like it, please hit that subscribe
button and notification bell. And if you wanna help
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"Bikepacking Journal." So to learn a little bit more about the Bikepacking Collective, you can click on the link
in the top right corner or also follow the link
in the description below. As always, thank you all
so much for watching. Until next time, pedal further. (bright music)
