Rachel Soukal dishes the dirt on the latest Diverge
Specialized touts the Diverge as the do-it-all gravel bike – be it racing, back roads or slippery singletrack. That’s a lot for one bike to live up to but could just be the answer to all our gravelly dreams. One of the Diverge’s many headline features is its gargantuan tyre clearance, up to 47mm for 700cc tyre or 2.1in on a 650b wheel. Then there’s the front end shock absorption. The original Diverge was one of the first gravel bikes to be equipped with ‘suspension’ with its Future Shock coming across from the Roubaix road range, and is featured on the Comp E5.
The build
As the top tier aluminium-framed Diverge, the Comp features an E5 alloy frame with a FACT carbon fork. The highlight of the Comp though is the aforementioned Future Shock 1.5, which is otherwise seen only on the more costly carbon framed bikes. The semiintegrated dampening system delivers up to 20mm of compliance through the stem stack, allowing vertical movement of the bars on the rough stuff giving your hands and arms some cushioning.
The 1x11 groupset is a composite affair, using SR AM Apex shifters, rear mech and hydraulic disc brakes alongside a Praxis Alba chainset, fitted with a 40t chainring, and an 11-42t Sunrace cassette and KMC chain.
Wheels are from Specialized’s in-house AXIS brand. The Elite Disc wheelset has carbon rims built onto proprietary hubs. Tyres are Specialized Pathfinder Sport, 700x38c non-tubeless.
Cockpit, seatpost and saddle are all Specialized’s own with 12° flared riser bars. Our test bike was a 54cm frame and weighed 10.1kg without pedals.
Surprisingly for a gravel bike neither the AXIS wheels nor Pathfinder tyres are tubeless-ready, so if you plan on going tubeless you’ll need to factor in a few upgrades.
The Diverge has frame and rack mounts for pretty much every eventuality, ideal for those who want to ride everything and everywhere at one time or another. In total there are six pairs of bottle/luggage mounts for the frame and forks, and ones for front and rear guards too.
I might be being rather fussy but I was a bit disappointed with a few finishing details on what is otherwise a very tidy looking frame. Firstly, the internal cables are really rattly on rough terrain, which foam sheaths would have easily solved. Then there’s the unused front mech mount which is far from the prettiest I’ve seen.
