Were We Wrong About Drop Bar MTBs?

Back in August, Keegan Swenson turned many heads when he won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on the Santa Cruz Hardtail with drop handlebars. A lot of people, us included actually, were probably very quick to judge what we thought about that decision. I just want to say first, his bike's so nearly unbelievably cool. Today, I'm lucky enough to have two Orbea OYZs. One with a conventional setup and another with drop handlebars. We've got these two bikes to see what I really think about it. Before I commit to riding this abomination, make sure if you like this sort of stuff, hit that subscribe and the like button. Drop bars on mountain bikes are nothing new. I can actually hear Owen over 100 miles away banging on about John Tomac. Drop bars do genuinely have a long history because you can change your position. Wilderness Trail founder, so WTB, Charlie Cunningham ran drop bars on all his bikes, even his first one, which was sub 24 pounds and made of aluminum and had boost spacing and brakes that worked. Oh, and two-by drivetrain, which nobody else had. That must have been 30 plus years ago, but they got a lot of attention because of one big mountain bike race this year. The Leadville 100 is a bike race held in, you guessed it, Leadville, Colorado. Don't let the name fool you though, the race is actually 105 miles long. Because of how long the race is, racers try to make their bike as efficient as possible, but comfort is also a consideration, those six hours or so in the saddle. For a few of those races, that involved trying something different with their setups. Keegan Spencer fitted drop bars to his Santa Cruz Highball Hardtail and Dylan Johnson fitted some to his Allied BC40 full suspension bike. Dylan did some number crunching and wind tunnel testing and worked out that over those 105 miles, his drop bar setup would be six minutes faster. Keegan backed those figures up by not only winning the race, but nearly breaking his own course record despite getting a puncture early on and having to switch out his wheel. Well, the Leadville 100 is a certain type of mountain bike race. Whilst there are some short technical single track parts, for the most part over the 105 miles, you could almost call it a gravel race, long distance, less technical mountain bike race. The marginal gains you get from these drop bars are worthwhile for that, but will we see any cross-country World Cup races using drop bars? Well, no, they are banned. Everyone knows that rule 4.1.040, you can't run drop bars in cross-country races. Also, I think those tracks have got so technical, the bikes have gone up to some of being 120 mil full suspension bikes just a couple of years ago. People were racing hardtails and 100 mil bikes, which they still are, but I don't think the drop bars would suit being able to ride those sections fast. What about us in the middle? I'm thinking to myself as well, is a super fast setup really needed? Well, no, but I do like to ride long distance, be efficient and fast, yes, sometimes, but also be comfortable as well. Should we be giving drop bars a go? Let's find out. Let's start with the regular Orbea Always. My bike, it is a beaut to look at and it is featherweight. In fact, Orbea says this bike is built to fly and that's hard to argue with. Obviously, lots of carbon fiber. This is the M Pro edition, so that's their OMX premium carbon fiber build, but it's the bars, the cockpit setup, I guess we're most interested in. This bike comes with a 75 mil stem and 760 mil wide carbon bars, which is absolutely on the money for me, but probably slightly wider than a lot of cross-country races have. Now, to the other Orbea Always, which I think is somewhat challenging to the eye. Actually, someone just rode past and shouted, that's bad for me. Some strong words there. Look at the bars. Keegan Swenson had some 37 centimeter bars, so fairly narrow. Why roadies measure in centimeters, not millimeters? I don't know, you tell me. Dylan went a bit wider with 42 centimeters. I am running some clearly massive 44 centimeter wide bars. The drop on these bars is 115 millimeters. That's funny, isn't it? Which is pretty damn low even compared to my cross-country bike. The stem is pretty slammed on there, but if I'm holding on to these drops at all, dare I do it, my hands are almost in line with the top of the fork. Pretty wild. A few stats fans out there, these bars have five degrees of drop flare and 11 degrees of drop outsweep. I have no idea what that means, but are they faster than that bike? I'm going to try these two bikes out in a few different scenarios. The first one being a cross-country loop. It is going to involve some gravel out on the fire roads and some more technical stuff on the single track in the woods. It's not going to be 105 miles long, maybe five, I don't know. We'll find out. I'm going to put a time to each bike. Let's start with the familiar and I'm with the conventional always. I'm ready. Are you ready? Here is a muddy, twisty little climb this. It does feel a bit like I'm on a gravel bike, but it's weird how, well, I've never in a gravel bike with tires this wide and it feels a bit like a monster truck, but it works. Initial impressions of the drop bar bike. It feels weird. It feels like a compromise at the moment, I've got to say. It doesn't feel like a gravel bike. It just feels like a funky mountain bike. The bar tape is massive, so the diameter, it's huge compared to my bar, my normal grips, I'd say. Obviously, I've got these Shimano GRX brakes and shifters on the hoods. This left-hand one, that actually operates the dropper post. One disadvantage of that is I don't have the squid lockout on the other bike. I do use that on these fire roads, so currently cannot lock this bike out. Downhill, it felt like a very small part of that ride. Obviously, I did bias the ride probably a bit more to gravelly stuff. Well, definitely more than I would usually do on a cross-country bike, for sure. On the downhills, which was short, it feels pretty wild, but not crazy, not as mad as I thought. Actually, on the drops, you have to be on the drops to get good brake control. Otherwise, up here, it's comfy. It's where I ride 90% of the time, but you're just not able to brake hard enough. Obviously, you are stretched out, but it's obviously not a gravel bike. It's a full suspension cross-country bike. It actually feels like the limiting factor to how fast you can go is your grip. It's not necessarily that position. It was fine. I did find it a bit weird when I did have to brake hard. Obviously, the levers float around a bit because you can push them in to change gear or put your post up. Wouldn't want to do that when I was going downhill. They're not as efficient, I suppose. I didn't feel as good on the brakes, and that did limit me a little bit, but you can bong on it. Climbing, it didn't feel that different, I've got to say. Obviously, most of the time, I'm riding on the hoods or on the flats, so it puts me in a really similar position to the cross-country bike anyway. I have raced on cyclocross, and it did feel like that. In the muddy climb I was on, the bike is drifting around up the climb, which is quite good fun, but obviously, my tires are way wider than I've got on any gravel or cyclocross bike I've ever ridden. That brings a different feel to it, but actually, it climbs very well. On the fire roads, when I'm bombing, you can feel the difference in aero. You just have narrow bars. Your arm position being that, it feels like I'm bombing. I would say climbing is where I felt the least difference on this bike. Shall we dig into the results? The course was 8.93 kilometers long, near enough 100 miles, and 225 meters of climbing. Obviously, it is a much shorter course. I wanted to try and keep my efforts the same across both bikes. I felt like I did that, but I'm on the bike I've just finished on. The drop bar bike, I did it in 34 minutes 15, average speed of 15.6 kilometers an hour, maximum of 53 kilometers an hour. That's pretty quick, isn't it? Now, I'm back to the cross-country bike, which I did earlier. I did that a lot faster, 31 minutes 19. Almost three minutes faster. That surprised me, but actually, when you look into the details. Average speed is higher, obviously, 17.2 kilometers an hour, but the max speed is quite a bit lower, 45 kilometers an hour to 53 on this bike. Overall, much faster, but if you're bombing along, this is the bike to be on. Obviously, the average speed tells you this all you need to know. On the more technical stuff, the downhills, although this does feel fast, I'm not convinced it is actually faster when it gets more technical. It just feels scarier. Like I said, the levers are moving around. When you hit the bumps, your fingers are going all over the place. That is a 760 bar on that bike. It is a really stable place to be, even at high speed. Yes, it's not as high on the max, but that's probably on that far road. I can dig into it, but I'm sure it is. It's not that in the singletrack. On the singletrack descent, it's just a much more stable bike, but interesting. Obviously, Keegan Swenson is a high-level professional athlete, and with experience at level 100, he wasn't guessing when he put his drop bars on. He knew that was going to be better for him. I'm sure we'll see more next year, although then you lose the advantage of having them. I think that will be the case for that sort of racing. Does it translate to everyone else? I don't think so. Not for me, at least. If I was doing a really extreme ride where I was spending long hours in the saddle, maybe. Nice to have the different positions. Definitely better for your wrists, I think. Having some super thick bar tape is quite nice as well, to be fair, but it does make riding them a bit weird. Also, it's not quite as simple as just swapping your bars. You do need the levers. You then need a rear mech as well. There's some cross-compatibility with Shimano with their GRX gravel groupset and their mountain bike drivetrain, but it's not that easy. You're going to have to swap out cables as well because they'll be different lengths. They don't play ball with lockouts, like I've said already. I think for most people, it's probably a step too far. For me, even on a cross-country bike, I do love smashing out the big rides, but I'm still there to really enjoy the fast downhill sections, and it is too much of a compromise for me. Feel your boots. If you like the look of it and you want to try it out, let us know in the comments down below. I'd love to know why you're using it, what sort of thing you're doing with it. Get involved in the discussion in the comment section.