In recent years, Unbound has become the world's biggest and most prestigious gravel race. Along with launching rider careers, it has also become a testing and proving ground for the latest cutting-edge gravel tech. For the eagle-eyed among us, there's a good chance you may spot something new or unreleased. At this year's event, I got lucky early on when, on a shake-out ride, I spotted something new aboard the bikes of pro riders Haley Smith, Keegan Swenson and Russel Finsterwald, among others.
What at first glance looked like a SRAM mullet build, which features a 12-speed mountain bike transmission rear derailleur, was, in fact, a new gravel drivetrain altogether. A closer look at the UDH-mounted derailleur, the number of rings on the cassette, and the teeth on the biggest cog confirmed it: this was the unreleased 13-speed SRAM Red XPLR AXS we'd heard rumours about.
