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Back in the day, CX used to be a way to get some off-season training done by fucking around in the woods. They'd use last year's road bike so there was no additional cost. MTBs didn't exist, so there was no superior off-road machine that they had to legislate a distinction between.
Nowadays, you need a dedicated CX machine, as expensive as any other race bike, if you want to take part. Rather than being optimised for any particular task, it's purely the rules of CX competition that dictate the form of these bikes.
How do we fix this? Well this CX isn't the first form of racing to face this problem. We can look to motorsports, where the cost aspect and trying to remain relevant to the mass-market are even bigger limitations. What was their solution? Homologation. Frames, wheels and drivetrain components should only be eligible for use in CX if they've seen use in a certain number of road events (of the same category as the CX event, or higher) in one of the previous five years.
Change my mind.
