This article was produced in association with Panaracer
The story of the Panaracer GravelKing tyre is the story of gravel itself. And there’s only one man to tell it. Jeff Zell is the Panaracer product manager who saw the potential in gravel back when it was just a few people riding bikes for fun on agricultural roads in the American Midwest, convinced the Japanese tyre manufacturer to give it a shot, and came up with the GravelKing name himself.
The GravelKing tyre is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and Panaracer has launched a complete revision of the line. Although the original model names remain, they’re new in everything but the tread pattern. There’s a compound that boasts lower rolling resistance and better grip, new puncture protection technology, new beads, a comprehensive range of sizes up to 700x50c and a new X1 racing tyre. It’s a far cry from the original GravelKing that was available in just 23 and 26mm when it was launched in 2014.
“Part of my job is to try to sniff out the different things in cycling and to work out what might happen,” says Zell, who has been in the industry for three decades and is now Panaracer’s ‘global go-to guy’. (That’s literally his job title.) “I started to see that there was a push against mountain biking in the sense that it had gone very technical, full suspension, the bikes had changed and there was a feeling that it was a different sport from the one they got into in the 1990s or 2000s. They were looking for something that was more accessible but they didn’t want to be road riders either.
“It really originated right in the middle of the United States from Minnesota right down to Texas and a little bit on either side. In that part there’s a great network of relatively well maintained gravel roads because of the agriculture in those regions. Agricultural vehicles rely on them; most of them are just used by tractors. You can go for hundreds of miles on them and you can just go and be what you want to be on the bike, which is really the essence of cycling. The wind hits your face and a smile comes across it. I know it sounds really sappy, but this is what we look for even if we’re not conscious of it. Gravel released that freedom. You weren’t really a mountain biker, you weren’t really a road biker... you could be any of those but you didn’t have to be – you just went out.”
Zell was so taken with the nascent gravel scene that he convinced his Japanese bosses, who hadn’t heard of it, to launch the GravelKing, and worked with the gravel riders in the USA to come up with what they needed. “People didn’t want really aggressive tyres; they were looking for something that rolled pretty fast but had enough traction to get through without having to worry too much about the weight and the width.”
And then the name. “Because I headed up product development for America and the EU, coming up with a name fell into my basket back then. I’m quite proud of that. GravelKing is just one word. We couldn’t use Gravel-space-King because it was trademarked by a heavy machinery gravel company. But I think the name helped the product because everyone could relate to it positively.”
However, although the original GravelKing was a big hit with the community in the US, Zell admits the rest of the world was largely unprepared. “People didn’t know what to make of it. There weren’t gravel bikes yet, there weren’t gravel-specific events yet, or at least not that were called ‘gravel’. It grew so organically and it was so much fun that the bigger companies weren’t paying attention to it. Everything in the early 2010s had been about road racing.
“We were dealing basically with aluminium rims, 700C and mostly the Mavic standard of that time, which was 17mm internal rim width. We changed to 19mm within the year, which really helped because there were wheels coming out from companies specialising in mountain biking to accommodate wider tyres. The wheel market exploded around that time and that opened it up.”
Zell remembers that at first it was just small and custom framebuilders who were making bikes specifically for gravel, with the rest of the scene using what they had. The 26mm GravelKing was originally in hot demand because some road bikes could accommodate it, and then it was the GravelKing SK, introduced in 2015, that really put gravel and Panaracer on the map.
“The Semi Knob, the SK, had that tightly packed short-knob centre tread with rails along the side that allowed for better control especially on those turns that you wanted to maintain speed on and it was an instant hit. This is what the market was looking for. We were the only ones that were really making something that spoke to what people were doing.”
By 2017, higher-end brands like Moots and Litespeed began to work with Panaracer. And Unbound, then known as Dirty Kanza, was starting to get a lot of attention. Other events were springing up. “People really enjoyed this type of activity where you could challenge yourself and then sit down with everybody and have a beer and a hot dog because you’ve earned it after beating yourself up on the gravel,” says Zell.
It was only around 2019 that gravel started to make an impact in Europe. “People had just been looking at it as a curiosity that was a lot of fun. I remember talking to my associates in the UK about gravel and they weren’t sure what it was either. They said, ‘We don’t have gravel like you have in Kansas or Iowa or Texas.’ I said, but you have some of the worst roads known to man and it may not technically be gravel but you want a more comfortable ride. Maybe you’re looking for something offering a bit more comfort that doesn’t feel like you’re on a shopping bike. That went off with a lot of people. The bridleways and trails in the UK head off in to a lot of things that are not necessarily mountain biking, but it’s definitely not road riding. That’s UK gravel. In the EU it took a little longer. You’ve got countries that are very protective of what they consider cycling to be. Particularly France and Italy, where road riding is so historical and so rich in tradition.”
Zell points out that most gravel bikes have drop bars, which may have made the new category easier for traditional European road riders to accept. Additionally: “The frames were somewhat similar and once you got your mind around the fact that you could get a 32, 34 or even 38mm tyre into some of these bikes that started coming out in 2019, and you came off that belief that you needed a narrow tyre at a high pressure, you were there. Then there was the adoption of tubeless-ready tyres and the rise of hookless rims. All of these things converged to create a perfect storm where this technology was being talked about in road circles, adopted in gravel circles and there was a happy medium between them. Enough of the technology made sense to both segments. I can still ride my road bike, be competitive and race, but when I don’t want to, I can take out my gravel bike – which gives me an excuse to buy another bike – and can get dirty without fear of wrecking the beautiful road bike. And I think all those things coming together helped propel gravel to the forefront, made the bigger companies pay attention.”
Now, with gravel firmly in the mainstream and still growing, what’s Zell’s take on where it’s at in 2024? “With gravel right now, I see a lot of parallels in other categories that have become popular during my time in the business. Mountain biking started out very grassroots, very community based, friends getting together, and then it went to being dominated by Europeans and the UCI. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground. Gravel’s grassroots are staying even though now we also have racing. Both can be good. You can be UCI focused coming from a road background and wanting those things we’ve associated more with road, or you can go out and do 50 kilometres while you’re drinking beer and stop every 5k to take photos. So far there seems to be a getting-along aspect, which I love, because I love both parts of it.”
Zell predicts gravel will continue to grow. “We’re still seeing a rise in events and interest in them at all levels. I don’t see anything replacing gravel right now, but I see it continuing as an established category.” Meanwhile, Panaracer and the GravelKing are still as central to the gravel movement as ever, with the new 2024 range “enhancing the category, making it as accessible as possible so it isn’t intimidating. We want it to be very easy for people to use it and for it to be as compatible as possible with the widest range of components out there. Of course from an industry point of view sales may slow down once everybody has a gravel bike, but what’s important is that gravel still gives people that freedom, getting them out on their bikes, being whoever they want to be, wherever they want to be.”
