Gravel riding may well be the genre du jour of cycling right now, but it’s been around since the advent of the bicycle itself. Long before asphalt and 42mm file-tread tyres were invented, there was little option to do anything else than hit the dirt. Stick a label on it and you’ve got another bike to buy and another way to get out for a ride. This isn’t a bad thing by any means, in fact it’s bringing back the very ideals of what riding a bike has always been about; riding a bike and going places with not much of a plan.

As a roadie and mountain biker, the melding of the two disciplines came onto the radar in 2005 with the classic stage of the Giro d’Italia featuring the climb of the Colle Delle Finestra. There was a real buzz of anticipation around the stage among my skinny-tyred shaved-legged brethren, mainly wondering how the hell were 23mm tyres going to handle soft dirt littered with rocks and gravel up an Italian mountain. Gathered at the home of a bike shop owner in the wee hours, the stage delivered a battle for the ages and a catalyst for taking our own delicate machines on anything resembling a dirt road that we could find within a hundred kilometre radius of our town. We didn’t know it at the time, but we’d sowed the seeds of our own gravel riding obsession.

Mike Crotty’s excellent Col Collective series looks at the Finestra in all its dirty glory and breaks down the numbers as he retraces the steps that spawned the second coming of gravel riding.

Watch the 2005 stage as Simoni, Di Luca and Rujano try to bury Savoldelli in the dirt.

The Finestra returned to the Giro in 2011 with Kiryienka soloing away from Contador, Nibali, Scarponi et al…