SANTA CRUZ Stigmata CC

One of the most distinguished brands in mountain biking makes its mark on gravel

STU BOWERS

Santa Cruz – the place not the bike brand (although the brand is based there) – has a decent claim to being the spiritual home of the gravel movement. Back in the 1970s, the city spawned a culture of adapting bikes to cope with the rugged terrain in the mountains and redwood forests of California. It’s how the mountain bike came into being, and the likes of Tom Ritchey and Keith Bontrager were building and riding drop-bar ‘gravel bikes’ long before anyone invented a term for them (they called them ‘clunkers’). Santa Cruz, the brand, prides itself on making only off-road bikes, and the original Stigmata was created as an out-and-out cyclocross race bike. But as senior engineer Ty Buckenberger explains, there was a demand for it to broaden its…

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Cyclist Off Road (Digital) - 1 Issue, Autumn 2019

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