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TECH FEATURES: KATIE COMPTON'S PLANET BIKE STEVENS
Road Bike Action
December 18, 2009
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Katie Compton has become the top female cyclocross rider in the world this season. She currently leads the Cyclocross World Cup, is one of the favorites for the upcoming World Championships and this past weekend in Bend, Oregon wrapped up her fifth straight national cyclocross title. The day before she rode away from the best racers in the US, Road Bike Action got a chance to take a close look at her Planet Bike-Stevens team bike.
Compton’s 52-centimeter team bike is built around Stevens’ Carbon Team cyclocross frame. The Carbon Team frame features oversized carbon tubing, with an internal 1.125-inch Cane Creek 110 headset. The rear triangle features a wishbone seatstay design and a replaceable rear derailleur hanger. A full carbon Stevens fork completes the frameset.
Compton is sponsored by SRAM, which provides her with Red shifters and derailleurs. The front derailleur on Compton’s bike is Red, but the titanium cage as been replaced with a steel version from SRAM’s Force group. This was done to increase shifting precision and durability in muddy conditions. Compton also uses a Force level PG-1070 cassette. Unlike the Red PowerDome cassette, the PG-1070 allows for individual cogs to be switched out if custom gearing is needed and has deeper grooves between the cogs to better shed mud.
 For gearing Compton runs a 44/34 front chainring setup mounted on long 175-millimeter Zipp VumaQuad cranks and ceramic bottom bracket with a 12-27 cassette. Compton’s 44-tooth chainring is custom made by WickWerks and is designed to be extra stiff, and fit the VumaQuad’s 110-millimeter bolt diameter. (Currently Zipp does not make a 44-tooth chainring in a 110-millimeter bolt diameter.) To get power from the cranks to the rear cassette Compton uses a KMC X10SL Ti Gold chain.
 To keep everything shifting smoothly, Compton uses sealed Gore derailleur cables.
Braking duties go to TRP EuroX Carbon brakes with Zipp carbon pads.
 Compton has been running Zipp's new wide-profile 303 carbon tubulars this season wrapped in Dugast tubular tires. Compton’s Zipp 303 wheels feature custom red, white and blue graphics to symbolize her reign as national champion. We shot Compton’s bike before Sunday’s race with Dugast Rhinos. We were unable to confirm which model of Dugast tires she rode during the race.
Thomson and Zipp provide the cockpit on Compton’s bike. Thomson supplies the 110-millimeter zero rise Elite X4 stem and Elite zero offset seatpost. Zipp provides the 42-centimeter SLC2 carbon bars wrapped in Zipp bar tape. Unlike a lot of elite riders, Compton uses TRP carbon top mounted brake levers. While the red Cane Creek 110 headset and blue spacers might appear to be another reference to Compton’s national champion status, the blue spacers are actually provided by Bike Pure and show Compton’s belief in riding clean.
 The cockpit is rounded out with a black WTB Silverado saddle that features titanium rails.
Crankbrothers provides Compton with Egg Beater 4ti pedals with red spring and blue end caps, again symbolizing Compton’s reign as national champion. For an extra bit of traction when mounting or dismounting Compton’s mechanic coats the end of the pedals in super glue then dips them in sand.
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