Leadville 100 has always been a curiosity on the calendar of American off-road racing.
In the heady days of the mountain bike boom, Leadville was the race where riders shed every possible gram, stripped their setups to the essentials, and leaned hard into maximising climbing efficiency over the 105 miles of high-altitude terrain.
Over time, that singular focus expanded. Aerodynamics began to creep into the conversation, with tri-bar extensions making periodic appearances throughout the 2010s, an era when aero gains briefly eclipsed all else. The 2x vs. 1x drivetrain debate followed a similar arc, as top racers sought the elusive balance between maintaining speed on the flat middle miles and powering through the steep climbs that bookend the course.
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Now, the next frontier is handlebar choice. Among the pointy end of the field, the question is: do I stick with traditional flat bars for better handling and a more natural mountain bike fit, or switch to drop bars to squeeze out aerodynamic gains and adopt a gravel-style riding position better suited for the fast, open stretches?
Why this mix works at Leadville
Andrew L’Esperance’s Leadville 100 bike
(Image credit: Andrew L’Esperance)
Leadville is the biggest, most iconic mountain bike race in the United States. The high-altitude course sits at 9,200 feet (2,804 m) at its lowest point and goes all the way up to 12,424 feet (3,787 m) at its highest point: the summit of Columbine Mine.
Over its decades-long history, the race has seen national and international talent cycle through and test themselves on the unique course. While much has changed in the cycling world, Leadville’s course has remained fairly consistent, defined by its long, tough climbs, exposed course and a surprisingly small amount of singletrack trail given its mountain bike title.
Because of this unique blend of terrain and demands, unconventional bikes have long been part of the Leadville scene, with drop-bar builds resurfacing from time to time. Always nearby, but rarely at the pointy end of the race.
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That started to change most notably with Cory Wallace in 2022, who finished 13th with a drop-bar setup. Dylan Johnson followed that up in 2023 with a top-20 result, before Keegan Swenson rode a drop-bar build to the top spot of the podium in 2024, pushing the drop-bar subplot into the mainstream.
Yet, as this shift to drop bars coming at the same time as gravel bikes’ big tyre revolution, why not go a step further and compete on gravel bikes?
“Suspension on a gravel bike is more about comfort and vibration dampening over rough terrain to improve efficiency, but this suspension on a mountain bike isn’t just about comfort; it’s more about it making the bike move faster,” Haley Smith said of the key difference between a gravel bike with suspension versus a mountain bike with drop bars.
Smith is an Olympic mountain biker and former Life Time Grand Prix series winner. She’s spent the past few months aboard a drop bar-equipped full-suspension mountain bike, and even raced it at the Migration gravel race in Kenya. For her, there is a clear reason to choose a mountain bike with drop bars over a gravel bike with suspension, even if they might seem similar on paper.
“The [Trek] Supercaliber is going to go faster up and down at certain points,” she said. “The top of Powerline is very technical. If you want to go faster, the mountain bike would do it better, because, if its suspension functions properly, it preserves your momentum through rougher terrain.
“You need legitimate suspension to have that effect. You need to have enough suspension to have the rebound, the damping, and the compression all functioning for you to hold forward momentum.”
With the big rocks, dips, and high speeds of Leadville, momentum preservation is key. Wide tyres thrive, full-suspension is ubiquitous, and a gravel bike is not quite the right tool for the job. Yet, aerodynamics are on the other side of the momentum preservation coin, and this is where some of the gravel tech is leaching over, even if the bike frames are still different.
The considerations around making the switch
Cole Paton’s Leadville 100 bike setup
(Image credit: Cole Paton)
When it comes to aerodynamics, drop bars on a mountain bike make a lot of sense, but there are downsides to consider as well. Most notably, in the handling.
Mountain bikes are built around a short stem paired with wide flat bars, which means they tend to have a longer reach than a drop-bar bike, making the fit with drop bars a hard transfer. Plus, the handling of a drop bar significantly changes the characteristics of a mountain bike on rocky terrain, with riders and the Life Time organisation stressing that this choice is best kept for the professionals. And while it is yet to be seen how pervasive drop bars are in the amateur ranks, what is clear is that skill level will influence who will make the leap to drop bars.
“I was completely undecided on what I would race the night before the stage race started,” Melisa Rollins said. Rollins is the defending Leadville champion and just took the win at the Leadville Stage Race last month as well, where she tested a drop bar setup.
“I had two setups ready to go: I had my mountain bike with flat bars, and I had a newly set up drop bar bike because I hadn’t completely dialled in the fit.
“Keegan [Swenson] will laugh because he told me at the beginning of the year I’d probably need to size down a frame, and I didn’t. I tried to make it work, but at the last second, I knew I had to size down. So getting the fit right was not completely straightforward for me.”
Rollins is a prime example of a rider resistant to the drop bar shift. She dominated the race last year with flat bars, and her primary challenger, Kate Courtney, is also sticking with flat bars as she drops into the race from the Cross-Country World Cup circuit. Why not just run it back and repeat what worked so well?
“I’ve never had access to the ability to dive into any sort of marginal gains,” Rollins said in response. “This year, to be completely honest, I am on entirely new equipment, and it wouldn’t be like I’m just running things back. Beyond my frame, I’m on completely different equipment.”
With the shake-up came the chance to test the drop bars, which ultimately won out.
“I’m super happy with my setup, and to be honest, the drop bars are freaking fun,” Rollins said. “I was a bit scared that I would get dropped going down Powerline, and that was my only apprehension about running the drop bar setup, but I’m the exact same speed, if not faster, on every descent with drop bars.”
Radical departures from the norm are typically adopted last by the masters of the craft. Sean Kelly, for instance, famously raced in toe clips long after the clipless pedal was standard in the pro peloton. In our example, this suggests the pure mountain bikers, the ones who begrudgingly race on drop bars when they are the obvious choice, might resist the call.
“I’ve raced it on a hardtail the last three years, and I’ve just always gotten to the last hour and a half, and every bump hurts so bad with that amount of fatigue in the race,” Cole Paton, the 2025 marathon mountain bike national champion, told Cycling Weekly. “I knew I wanted to go full suspension without a doubt. Then, the next question was: Do I go with the drop bar or not?”
Kicking and screaming, Paton had to relent. From his perspective, with a massive bank of technical skills few on the gravel scene possess, it was undeniable.
“The mountain biker in me was trying to justify keeping it a mountain bike as much as I could,” he said, “I really didn’t want to build this atrocious Frankenstein bike. But in the end, I built up the drop bar out of just curiosity, and it was just like clearly so much easier to get up to speed and maintain speed with the narrower bars.
“It’s not even like the drop bars necessarily, it’s just closing off the chest cavity in a neutral riding position where you are just that much more dynamic.“
Putting the drop bars through their paces before the big dance
Haley Smith’s Leadville 100 bike
(Image credit: Haley Smith)
Over the last month, the speculation over bike setups has changed from concept to practice as racing has taken a back seat to training camps, course previews, and high-altitude exposure. Every day closer to the race, and it seems a new rider was teasing drop bars on the “wrong” bike in the “wrong” place.
Yet this has been building for much longer.
“I wanted to do it last year, but I was too afraid,” Smith shared. “I think I’m pretty good on the drop bar bike on technical terrain. For whatever reason, I find it easy to manipulate that kind of bike and throw it around, so my fascination with it started several years ago.
“I was set on riding a gravel bike at Iceman Cometh, but I just didn’t have the right gearing. So I’ve wanted to do it for a while, but I just didn’t have the trust in myself to do it last year. But then, when Russell [Finsterwald] did it last year, it gave me the confidence to do it. I wanted to be one of the first women to do it, so we made it happen.”
So much of the drop bar discourse has been built around an almost reluctant acceptance that drop bars are just more aero, not necessarily better. Among some of the riders we spoke to, after testing, they are seeing more upside than just accepting them as a necessary evil.
“One thing I’ve learned is that the weight balance front to back on a modern mountain bike is not necessarily even,” Andrew L’Esperance said. L’Esperance was one of the Life Time Grand Prix Wild Card winners and is a notorious tinkerer in the gravel world. He is also Smith’s husband.
While he comes from the mountain bike world, gravel has given him the license to consider things differently. For Leadville, the drop bar project started as an effort to keep things fresh, but has ended with him being convinced of the benefits on several levels.
“With the drop bars, you can get a lot of weight on the front tire and get a lot of grip with that weighted front tire. I do find it handles quite well on smooth, twisty single track because you can push that front tire and have a lot of grip.”
The choice to run drop bars ultimately comes down to all of these advantages and disadvantages rolled into one system. For Smith, that system works best together for Leadville and has very few, if any, downsides.
“Your body position is more aerodynamic, and it’s just easier overall,” she said. “It requires a lower metabolic cost to hold an aerodynamic position, so it’s both more efficient and aerodynamic as well.
That is why it excels here because you don’t really have the same trade-offs with the drop bar handling like you do on technical trails. On those with drop bars, the steering is a lot more twitchy, and your drops get in the way of your knees, for example. You don’t need to do that at Leadville at all.”
Are there real gains to be had, or is this just a fad?
Now, if you have read through this whole story and still aren’t convinced, you aren’t alone. Plenty of pro riders, whether out of principle or practical reasons, will line up on Saturday with flat bars that resemble the cockpits of the decades of history that have made Leadville the event that it is today.
But be stuck in the sand at your own risk.
“I’m just doing what I think is best for me to go faster,” Keegan Swenson said. “I don’t think drop bars are best for everyone. Alexey [Vermuelen] and I talked in depth about this on our podcast we did while we were up here training – I think people can chase marginal gains, but in the end, they’re going to end up getting slower.
“I’m just doing it for myself to try and go faster and find whatever edge I can. It’s not a gimmick or a trick. Sure, it’s cool to be like, ‘This is the bike that I’m racing, and this is all that is going on,’ but in the end, I’m just doing it for myself, not for clicks.
Beyond Swenson, who is not one to blow up his mechanical advantage if he feels like he has one, conviction over the effectiveness of drop bars is even stronger.
“I think in the men’s top 10,” L’Esperance said, “the majority will be on drop bars.”
Curiously, on the women’s side, there is less conviction over the drop bar trend. Only three women were on drop bars at the Leadville Stage Race, while the men had too many to count on two hands. What’s more, few doubt that Kate Courtney won’t be able to compete with her flat bars.
Yet for the men, the tide seems to be going dramatically in the other direction.
“On this bike, I’m a lot faster than on my hardtail mountain bike. I do a lot of the same training loops here in Durango, and on all the descents, I’m faster on this bike. Unfortunately, it made the decision easy,” Cole Paton said.
“It’s just like a mountain biker pride thing in me. This is like an iconic mountain bike race, and it is aesthetic. I wish we were all racing mountain bikes – but to be competitive, I don’t think it’s an option. I think you’re leaving a lot of gains on the table without doing it, and my job is to be as competitive as possible.
“I was just not looking forward to a training block on it cause it’s also like you have to spend all the time getting used to that position riding these Frankenstein bikes, and I’m like it limits me in the places I want to go because my mountain bike with flat bars is just so much more capable. It is like, ‘Damn, I have to ride this bike and kind of mellow out the places that I go.’”
In the peloton of American off-road racing, away from the UCI’s tendency to regulate and filled with competitive riders hell bent on technical gains, the Frankenstein bikes are here to stay.
“But that’s part of the job these days – you have to ride all these funky things.”