Vittoria Cross XM Pro tyre

With the majority of cyclo-cross bikes these days seemingly going nowhere near the race course it's a surprise that anyone makes a 'cross tyre that's designed for anything other than the hardships of debris-riddled bike lanes and genteel bridleways, but thankfully Vittoria realise that there are still a few misguided idiots that use their cyclo-cross bikes for their intended purpose of an hour of painful mud of a Sunday morning and so produce a tyre for them. Hooray.

The open design of the Cross XM Pro's tread sparsely decorated with thin lateral paddles of rubber screams "thick mud" and it copes with it very well indeed. Thrown into the traditional 'cross battleground of playing-fields churned to a rim-deep porridge of slurry and grass the Vittorias reacted superbly with no clogging and no loss of traction either, which while excellent news for a tyre designed for the mud had the downside for the haggard rider of yielding no excuses to stop pedalling thanks to slipping or overloaded tyres. With the tread being biased towards maximising forward grip there's not much in the way of sideways control so they can have the habit of gently drifting on slimy off-camber corners and damp grass but with a bit of practise that drift can be used as an advantage in corners where the rear can be joyfully slid round with a shimmy of body swerve for a bit of two-wheel steering. These Vittorias certainly square up to the seasonal favourite Michelin Muds as a cyclo-cross mud tyre du choice.

There are going to be times when the Cross XM Pro needs to perform out of it's designed environment, be that on the race course as the tape corridor swaps from car-park tarmac to grassy bank or just mucking about on a mix of tarmac, hardpack and mud. As it's designed for the loose and the slippy it's not going to be perfect all-rounder but it's more capable than it's looks suggest. On harder surfaces the open design and thin tall tread slugs combined with the 120 TPI casing making them not the most supple of rubber and the Vittorias feel a very tippy-toe and nervous tyre but grab them by the scruff of the neck and tell them with a firm hand what to do and their skippity character can be controlled. On wet tarmac climbs a tongue-out degree of pedalling finesse was required to prevent them from spinning out on every revolution though. Thankfully the tread compound isn't Plasticine soft so even after being ridden over the full gamut of terrains from solid tarmac through to soft mud the tyres are wearing well, considerably better than expected and the PRB protection led the Vittorias to be completely puncture free over several months of 'just riding around', which is quite the rarity for a 'cross tyre round these parts where thorns and flints usually award at least one flat per ride.

Verdict

Excellent mud and soft condition specific cyclo-cross tyre that's not too frightening on other surfaces either.