I get a bit misty-eyed about the 3T Exploro. I remember when it came out; the buzz around it was wild. ‘Gravel’ was in its infancy (no, don’t start about '90s MTB, we haven’t the time) and I was razzing around the canal towpaths of Leeds on a cyclocross bike wondering why anyone in their right minds would make an aero gravel bike, as well as very much wanting one. This was further compounded when a friend of mine actually bought one, but fortunately for my beleaguered post-university bank balance, we were different enough in height that I never rode it.
The Exploro hasn’t stagnated since its inception, and now exists in three guises - the ‘Pro’, which is the OG model, the ‘Ultra’ for bikepacking, designed primarily around 650b wheel usage, and the ‘Racemax’, optimised for 700c wheels with narrower tyres. Now it seems the Italian brand is creating two divergent streams of off road evolution.
Earlier in the year the brand launched its Racemax Italia, a bike very much aimed at the gravel racing we see at the pointy end of events like Unbound. Now it has launched the Extrema Italia, a bike clearly heading in a different direction. There's still an aero package, but the stated aim of this new lineage is to tackle far more challenging terrain. Think events like the Atlas Mountain race, where half the field turns up on mountain bikes.
Luckily for me, 3T have loaned the new bike to us here at Cyclingnews for testing, and as you can see from the pictures, it hasn't been in anything you might call fair weather. How did it stack up then? Let's dig into it.
Design and aesthetics
Gravel bike chat, whether around the design table or down the pub always comes back to tyres. The hook for the Extrema Italia is that it can run tyres as big as 700c x 57mm. Running tyres that wide isn’t necessarily new for gravel bikes; my long term Fairlight Secan can run tyres that wide, but only by sizing down the rim to 650b. The slow demise of 650b as a wheelsize for gravel has been happening year on year, with fewer bikes coming with 650b from the factory, or even accepting them (officially at least) as an aftermarket option. Tyre brands are also producing fewer 650b models, mirroring the demise of 27.5 in the MTB world (the same diameter as 650b, just with a different name).
This is easily achieved at the front end by simply slapping a wider-set fork on, but it’s more tricky at the rear as the widening of chainstays mean they start to interfere with chainrings. Dropping them both helps in this case, but it’s pretty miraculous that this is both 1x and 2x compatible. Specced as my test bike was with a 10-52t Rival GX Eagle transmission with a 40t chainring from the factory I can’t see why you’d want to spec a 2x on this bike, as much due to its intended use and where it excels as anything else.
Aero in gravel certainly isn't new, but turning up to the Monday night gravel groupride on a frame with tubes as overbuilt as this certainly raises some eyebrows. I’ll get into the performance shortly, but aesthetically at least, especially with the combination of deeper Zipp 303S rims and chunky rubber, and the aero handlebar, the bike does look like it would roll over more or less anything. The dropper post, a Rock Shox Reverb unit, actually looks a little skinny in the context of the bike as a whole. If you look through our guide to the best gravel bikes they all resemble road bikes to a greater extent, but that's not so much the case here in my view. The downtube is actually very reminiscent of the Ribble Ultra, come to think of it, though that clearly has a very different use case in mind.
Given the bikepacking/ultra focus of the machine it’s no surprise to see the usual suspects in terms of mounting options. Triple bosses on the forks for anything cages, doubles on the seat tube and under the down tube, as well as the top tube, and a triple set on the downtube for carrying larger bottles if necessary, or mounting one bottle lower down. Interestingly the two bosses on the top tube are set noticeably further back than I’ve seen on other bikes, and my suspicion is so that it can be used with a side loading bottle cage and accommodate a large water bottle without fouling on the stem. I don’t run a bento box/snack pouch/top tube bag (chose your name as you wish), but as most of them are designed to effectively but up against the stem then you may find an unsightly gap on yours.
Finally we have the bars, the Aeroghaia. A very pleasing shape, clearly very aero with extremely flat and wide tops. The 3T stem is extremely neat, and fortunately I found a space to mount my large light, but if you use an out-front computer mount you’re out of luck as the bolts are tucked round the back of the stem faceplate in a hinge design. This meant I had to mount my computer on the bars, reducing the real estate for holding.
One final bugbear I have is that the finishing tape for the bars has written upon it “The world is a book, and those who don’t travel read only one page”. I’m sure Saint Augustine of Hippo, to whom this quote is attributed, meant well, but the fact that he is the patron saint of sore eyes (no, really) is apt as reading this quote on a bicycle made me wince.
Performance
I was rather lucky in that last night, in a desire to blow off the post-Covid and post-Black Friday cobwebs, I decided to head out on a gravel group ride. A good few hours in the cold and wind. Truth be told I hadn’t realised the bike was being released as soon as today. In any case, I got to test it on everything from open exposed roads, through flowing forest gravel trails, techy climbs, and finally some really rather spicy, rocky mtb gulleys. My main takeaway is that, more than any other gravel bike I’ve ridden, this makes the case for ‘gravel bikes are just mountain bikes’.
Cross country MTB courses are getting more lairy, and as such cross country mountain bikes are getting more lairy to account for this, leaving a void. We’ve seen riders like Lael Wilcox and Dylan Johnson slapping drop bars on their mountain bikes for some gravel races - the latter I suspect may be a comfort choice as the Factor Ostro Gravel is truly unforgiving in its stiffness - but however aggressive a hardtail is, it’s hard to get into an aero position (unless you do some Lachlan Morton inspired stem wizardry).
The riding position isn’t as road-like as the aforementioned Secan; it’s more upright, and is what 3T describes as its “3Touring” geometry. For what this bike is built for it’s pretty much spot on in my eyes, from my initial impressions at least. It’s long enough that, in the hoods and in the drops, you can feel like you’re at least not acting like a giant windbreak, but when things point downhill, particularly when it gets a bit techy, you’re not pitched so far over the front that you feel like you’re going to go over the bars if you make a mistake. This is very much helped by the dropper, something which I must admit I was sceptical of. On the road I found myself in the drops more than normal, as I think this is where it best emulates my road position, but off road I was primarily on the hoods.
This isn’t really a bike designed for the road though, and this is evident when you do point the monstrous tyres towards the muck. I didn’t have time to set them up tubeless or dial in the pressures at all, but even so, everything made a little more sense off road. The position, too relaxed for the road, felt spot on. On fast open descents it was stable, with ample grip from the tyres and it was, to put it bluntly: bloody quick! Especially if you dropped the saddle down a la Matej Mohorič at Milan San Remo. It held speed well on the flat too, and thanks to the gargantuan cassette no gradient proved too much; especially on muddy climbs the ability to stay in the saddle was invaluable.
On trails that were very much mountain bike territory it handled itself with aplomb. The dropper was brilliant, and while I think I’d like to adjust the hood position to bring the levers a little closer to the drops, I never felt out of my depth. Honestly, I reckon if you fitted a flat bar to this it would be an absolute hoot, something which, thanks to the brilliant intercompatibility of SRAM’s groupsets, should be a relatively easy mod.
Further testing is of course needed to really see where its strengths and weaknesses lie, but from what I’ve found so far it’s a bike that’ll be more than a match for any off-road adventure you can think of. I keep casting my mind back to the best gravel ride of my life, one which I undertook on a Pinarello F road bike, and thinking how much more fun I would have had on this… Maybe another time.
Early verdict
The 3T Extrema Italia is clearly designed first and foremost with off-road riding in mind. It can hang in with the group just fine on the tarmac, but it doesn’t necessarily feel at home there. In contrast, off road it feels right at home, and really excels over more racy gravel bikes when things get lumpy, techy, or loose.
Fast descents that would normally be hair raising become genuinely enjoyable, and fast, open ones become a chance to set speed records. It's one step closer to reaching some sort of gravel/MTB unification - If they sold it with a flat bar option this conclusion might have more weight, but it’s certainly another incremental change towards that end goal.
Pricing and availability
If you want to get riding on one of these then you’ve got three tiers of frameset to work with (which include the stem and handlebar), starting at £4,593/$5,499/€4,999, moving through a ready-to-paint version of the top end frameset that’ll set you back £4,868/$5,799/€5,299, and finishing with painted versions of the top end ‘Project X’ frameset for £5,050/$6,099/€5,499.
Complete bikes start with a SRAM Rival / GX Eagle drivetrain, and Zipp 303 wheels but no dropper post for £6,697/$7,999/€7,299. Add a dropper post and the new 3T Torno Wide crank (as yet unreleased, more on that in a second) and this goes up to £7,612/$9,199/€8,299. This is the spec you see here, but the Torno Wide crank is as yet unavailable.
Anyone who purchases this or the higher spec Project X complete bike will receive the Torno Wide crank as a free upgrade as and when it becomes available. The top of the range Project X, complete with the aforementioned Torno Wide crank, SRAM Force XX SL Eagle drivetrain, dropper post and 3T’s own Discus 45/40 Superwide wheelset will cost you £9,625/$11,599/€10,499.
