Our Tech Q&A is your chance to have your burning questions answers – big or small, complex or trivial – with help from the BikeRadar team and trusted industry experts. Today, a reader wants to buy a new, slightly unconventional gravel bike.
I want a step-through gravel bike. It’s not a question of flexibility or confidence, I just like the chilled-out vibe of a step-through bike and think they will be more relaxed to ride and get off. What options are there on the market?
Cole Rysava
Step-through gravel bikes are certainly a niche choice, but there are a few options out there that will suit you – and there are plenty of ways to achieve a similar result if you’re happy to go DIY.
Most step-through or low-step bikes are designed with urban or touring in mind, rather than gravel riding. As a result, many come with flat bars rather than drop bars, and geometry that prioritises comfort over outright performance.
However, options exist: bikes such as the Velo Orange Polyvalent Low-Kicker or the now-discontinued Marin’s Nicasio 1 ST (if you can find one second-hand) all fit the brief, combining low-slung mixte-style top tubes with geometry and tyre clearance that can handle gravel riding.
However, if these don’t quite suit you, or aren’t available where you live, there’s no reason you couldn’t convert a regular step-through hybrid to use drop bars if you wanted.
The handling and fit may not match that of a purpose-built gravel bike, and you may need to fuss about to land on an ideal cockpit setup, but it doesn’t sound as though that will be a problem for you.
Another option is to look for gravel bikes with very low or heavily sloping top tubes. These can offer much of the same easy mounting and dismounting benefits without going to a full step-through design.
