In a surprise move, Life Time Grand Prix took the decision on Friday to ban drop bar setups from competition at some mountain bike events within the series, those being Leadville Trail 100 MTB and Little Sugar MTB.
These new rule changes are, it is reported, due to "rider safety and compatibility concerns", in a move that mirrors to some degree the high profile banning of aero bars at Unbound and other gravel events in recent years. The wording of the new rule is unambiguous:
"For rider safety and course compatibility, drop-style handlebars (road or gravel bars with drops) are no longer permitted for the Life Time Leadville Trail 100 MTB and Life Time Little Sugar MTB. All competitors must use flat or riser-style handlebars at these events. This rule will be enforced during pre-race inspections and on course; violations may result in disqualification."
Leadville is a 100 mile mountain bike race, and while for years the field has turned up to race on mountain bikes, a growing trend in recent years has been for top athletes (and presumably some amateurs, too) to swap the flat bars for a drop bar cockpit in a bid to improve the aerodynamics of their machines.
Dylan Johnson, a famously restless setup fiddler, was one of the first to the drop bar party, while the watershed moment was perhaps Keegan Swenson winning while using drop bars in 2024 at the event.
Since then we have seen a steady trickle of unofficial setups in this vein, as well as some fully sanctioned production machines. The likes of the Ridley Ignite, the Lee Cougan Innova Super Gravel, and perhaps the most high-profile release of all: the Pinarello Dogma MX. This bike was so oddly specific, and so unavailable in many territories including the UK and US, that we speculated that it was a production run designed specifically for Tom Pidcock to use for taking a tilt at Leadville later this year.
Sources close to Pinarello, however, remained noncommittal on this front. There is, of course, still a chance we will see the Olympic MTB champion tackle the famously gruelling, high altitude event, but if he does it’ll be on a standard Pinarello Dogma XC hardtail.
This ban will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on drop bar builds, which have become the latest gravel trend (or fad, if you’re of a sceptical disposition). While Lifetime's other MTB event, the Chequamegon MTB Festival, will still allow drop bars in competition in a slightly confusing move, it's fair to say that Leadville is the blue riband MTB event of the non-UCI world, and it is from there that tech trends flow to a great extent.
Gravel bikes have been moving towards MTBs in many ways, utilising longer, slacker geometry and most clearly utilising much larger (even MTB size) tyres in order to make them more capable over rougher terrain, but actually fitting drop bars to a mountain bike is a task that requires at least some degree of forethought regarding compatibility, despite SRAM making things a lot easier in recent years on this front. Without a high-profile event showcasing this setup it's much harder to see brands developing machines for comparatively little media interest, and harder still to see amateurs having the impetus to recreate these setups themselves.
