"Trek has been super amazing in working with us on this. In particular, Legg-Compton expects to see a difference on courses with unusually steep sections – especially if it's muddy, snowy or icy – where the more consistent braking performance might play a bigger role. Maybe we'll start seeing that on the more challenging courses in Europe." Aside from that, we haven't seen any real performance advantage with them yet. The problem is that if everyone is on disc brakes, that negates the advantage. At Providence, you could definitely brake a little later, which, if you're doing an F1-style pass, works really well. "It's definitely been a steep learning curve. What little we saw of disc brakes before – obviously, they were mechanical – were issues with brake pad wear and so we want to take more of a measured approach to this and go with what we know works, and then introduce something and test it out when we're ready without going full hog. "We have a disc bike as an option there to test out because we just don't have any information on racing European-style races where the conditions are so much more challenging for the brakes. "Right now we're running disc bikes on the US side of things and in Europe we're going with cantilevers," he said. After all, though it offers a lot of benefits in theory, it's still largely untested on the World Cup circuit, particularly in the often exceptionally nasty conditions of European races. While some others have been quick to jump on the disc brake bandwagon, Compton is taking a decidedly more measured approach and perhaps rightfully so. "Carbon will be in Katie's future but she's racing and winning World Cups on an aluminum bike so it still shows that it's a very viable material." That turned out to be a big advantage there," he said. "The nice thing we discovered at the Czech World Cup in Plzen is that the aluminum bike clears mud better. Legg-Compton says the Crockett's better geometry trumps any comparatively minor weight savings, though – and not surprisingly, also hints that a new carbon variant is likely coming next year with the same angles. We've been noticing that the traction is even better and you can catch front wheel slides easier as well."Ĭhain stays are also shorter than on the Cronus and the Compton requested a steeper seat tube angle for what she says is a more powerful position for cyclo-cross.Ĭlaimed frame weight for a 56cm aluminum Crockett frame is around 1,250g – impressive for an alloy chassis but still heavier than Trek's carbon fiber Cronus CX. "When you turn the front wheel on a frame with steep geometry, you don't immediately put the tire on its edge – you're still on the midpoint of the tire. Legg-Compton says that despite the Crockett having a longer front center and slacker head tube angle than Trek's current Cronus carbon fiber CX flagship, the new bike actually handles faster.
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