Genesis Croix de Fer 2009
A road bike that de ned big adventures on any surface
YEAR LAUNCHED !""#
These days road-, all-road-, adventure- or gravel bikes with wide tyres, disc brakes and aspirations for big riding adventures on any surface are 10 a penny. But in 2009, when Genesis launched its Croix de Fer (French for ‘iron cross’) these were very much the exception. After all, at that time, the go-to tyre width on a road bike was a now hard-to-imagine 23mm – not the 35mm rubber that this genuinely ground-breaking Genesis came with. It proved a big hit with British riders, the Reynolds 725 chromoly-steelframed bike selling out in its first year.
Genesis launched the bike as a ‘cyclo-cross machine with added versatility’, but we reckon it found its niche as a genuine all-rounder, a proto-gravel bike that was more likely to be seen on a commute or weekend fitness ride than being thrashed around a cyclo-cross course. Genesis was ahead of the game when it said that “drop bars don’t always mean tarmac”, predating the seemingly allconquering rise of the gravel bike, even if it was a few years after Caribou (no 12) had a similar all-surface philosophy.
Since that time, the Croix de Fer has been ever-present but ever-evolving in the Genesis range. Tyre clearance has increased, cassettes received lower bottom gears, models inevitably gained hydraulic gears and single-ring, though slightly surprisingly none of the dozen models in the present Croix de Fer range, including two with flat bars, have 1x set-ups. But while there have inevitably been changes since we first tested a Croix de Fer, today’s models are clear descendants of that very first model.
Genesis was ahead of the game when it said that “drop bars don’t always mean tarmac”, predating the gravel bike