If you’ve looked at Canyon’s range of carbon fiber gravel bikes and been confused at how the Grail and Grizl are different, you’re not alone. Canyon clearly felt there was too much overlap internally, too, and the two lines will be more distinct moving forward. The Grizl will continue on as the German consumer-direct brand’s more adventuresome option with more generous tire clearance, more versatile handling, and more options for things like suspension forks and droppers, but the newly revamped Grail CF is now more sharply focused on gravel racing and going fast on unpaved roads in general.
Refinement seems to be the overarching theme here. The new Grail CF range boasts significantly better aerodynamics with more speed-focused handling, there’s new storage in the down tube and a neat quick-release frame bag, there’s a dedicated quick-release fender kit (that’s surprisingly good), and new one-piece cockpit setups with a range of available bolt-on accessories. Oh, and that wacky double-decker handlebar setup? Buh-bye.
If you sit in the middle of the bell curve in terms of fit and are looking to go fast on gravel, the new Grail CF will likely be a very good choice – and with Canyon’s typically exceptional levels of value, too. But if you’re even a little bit left or right of center, you may be more disappointed and frustrated at what might have been.
Good stuff: Better aerodynamic efficiency, more stable handling, lots of well-done integration, looks good, excellent value.
Bad stuff: Limited cockpit and seatpost sizes, firm ride quality.
Canyon’s formula for speed
Not surprisingly given the new focus on going fast, the revamped Grail CF gets a big dose of aerodynamic shaping. Truncated airfoil profiles are everywhere you look, including the down tube, seat tube, head tube, fork blades, and seatstays. Up top is a D-shaped carbon fiber seatpost profile borrowed from Canyon’s Ultimate family of road bikes, and there are new – and far more conventional-looking – one-piece carbon fiber cockpits made just for the Grail CF to replace that goofy double-decker setup.
Cable routing is now mostly hidden, but the lines don’t pass through the bar and stem at all, instead entering the frame through the upper headset cover and just tucking up against the underside of the stem. And in a big break from Canyon’s norm, those new cockpits attach to a completely normal – as in, round! – 1 1/8”-diameter steerer tube.
All told, Canyon claims a rider on the new Grail CF traveling at 45 km/h will have to put out nine watts less power than someone else on the old version. For the racers out there, that’s hardly nothing.
The frame geometry has also been retuned for covering ground at speed. The reach is substantially longer than before, the head tube is slacker, and there’s more fork rake across the board. Canyon says the rider weight distribution is more even than it was on the old Grail CF range, and toe overlap is apparently a thing of the past for each of the seven sizes, despite the fact all of them now use 700c wheels exclusively (although that seemingly comes at the expense of a very big trail dimension on the 2XS size). Some 650b wheel-and-tire setups may still fit, but Canyon doesn’t recommend it.
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