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Pro bikes, December 26, 2007
Danny Summerhill's CLIF Bar Development Salsa Cycles Chili con Crosso
The green machine that drives the future of America's cyclo-cross hopefulsBy James Huang
The 2007 UCI World Cyclo-cross World Championships was undeniably a breakout year for US 'cross racing with three silver medals in key events: Jonathan Page in the Elite Men's race, Katie Compton in the Elite Women's, and one of the brightest up-and-coming stars of the sport in the US, Danny Summerhill in the Juniors event. Summerhill, now 19 years old, is spending his third year as part of CLIF Bar Development team. The team was originally founded by current Team Director Ben Turner as an offshoot of the TIAA-CREF road development team but has grown to become what is arguably the premier 'cross development team in the US. "The team mission is to help the best Colorado junior and U23 cyclo-cross racers gain experience at the national level against all the other top kids in the country," stated Turner. "We want to have success at nationals, obviously, but the ultimate goal is to really have kids get interested and be committed enough to go to the European camp and get experience in Europe and make the world championships team. "[Last year] was huge," Turner continued. "We've always done a good job of having juniors and under-23 kids who are diehard 'cross racers and they're just dedicated to the sport and learning more. So we've sent a lot of kids to the European camp and had quite a few World Championship selections but actually being able to go to Worlds and have a silver medal performance come out of our team thanks to Danny was just incredible." In spite of the team's outstanding performances on the race course, Turner doesn't necessarily set podium finishes as its overall goal. The team has also established an equally high priority of making sure its impressionable racers develop into responsible adults, and a large part of that message is how their day-to-day actions impact their environment. When coupled with that on-bike success, the result is a compelling package for sponsors. "The interest that people have in sponsoring our team is that they feel really good about supporting up and coming cyclocross kids," said Turner. "They feel really good about the team's commitment to operating more sustainably in the cycling world, and also just educating the kids in our program and helping them become really well-rounded adults and not cranking out fast bike racers. We really do a lot to help the kids become involved in their communities and learn about the environmental impact of what they're doing. They make a difference; they're not just kids out there racing bikes all the time." CLIF Bar has supported the team since its outset but made the commitment to become its title sponsor at the start of the '07 season. "Team CLIF Bar has supported the cross team from the get-go. The fit is ideal," said CLIF Bar's Dylan Seguin. "[We] absolutely love what this program stands for - the team's out there leading by example on so many levels. Ben has been wonderful to work with on [the sustainability] front - he completely 'gets it' and has done a fantastic job incorporating environmentally responsible efforts into the team plan. The Team CLIF Bar Sustainable Sports program is focused on sustaining sports in many ways. Quality junior development programs within sports are a sustainability effort in their own right - then you add in all the efforts the CLIF Bar Development Cyclocross Team is making to reduce its ecological footprint and build awareness of the climate change issue so that others can feel empowered to take action… the kids conduct themselves very professionally - they're some of the best ambassadors out there for the sport of cyclo-cross. And, to top it all off, they race real fast. It's a hard mix to beat." Turner is obviously equally excited about the relationship from his end: "With CLIF Bar, we've been really involved in helping get their 'Start Global Cooling' message out, and that's a campaign that's meant to raise awareness about global warming and give people things that they can do at home to reduce their carbon footprint, how much carbon dioxide they emit during their daily lives: driving, and running electricity in their house and those sorts of things. Last year we simply calculated all of our travel miles via airplane and car for all of the kids and all of the races and figured out our carbon footprint for that, and then we bought wind energy credits through Native Energy, which is just a simple offset. You pollute this much, and you purchase wind energy credits to put that much more wind power into the grid." Even that isn't enough for the team, though, who markedly stepped up its sustainability efforts this year. They've partnered with Boulder, Colorado-based Eco-Cycle to help the USGP of Cyclo-cross reduce the environment impact of the race series and also acquired a decidedly unconventional 'new' team vehicle. "This year we decided to try to take it up a notch and try to reduce our pollution and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," said Turner. "We got this team bus which is able to run on biodiesel or waste vegetable oil. We still have to rely on diesel fuel once in a while when we're around the Interstate highway systems but we're trying to do the best we can to seek out biodiesel. We're still in the process of getting our waste veggie oil system up and running, but we're ready to roll with the vehicle. It's making a difference as compared to driving around a big gas guzzling van or something." Even the team's bike sponsor was a perfect fit with the environmentally friendly theme. According to Jason Boucher of Salsa Cycles, "It was a pretty simple decision to sponsor the team. Salsa Cycles' motto is 'Ride & Smile' and I think most agree that cyclo-cross is so darn fun, both for riders and fans. More importantly, though, is the message behind this team. This team is focused on youth and the environment, both very important things with very powerful long lasting impacts for cycling and the world. Additionally, Salsa Cycles and our parent company, Quality Bicycle Products, are very focused on the environment… both the team and Salsa's values are in alignment. It just felt right." Big picture issues aside, the team does still want to win races, and Salsa's Chili con Crosso is well suited to the task. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company bucks the carbon trend with a full scandium-enhanced aluminum tubeset. "The Chili Con Crosso is Salsa's all out cross racing bike," said Boucher. "We chose scandium tubing instead of carbon for a few reasons. We knew building our race cross bike out of carbon would likely price the bike out of range for most cross racers and Salsa's customers. We also thought that to build a bike both light and durable, that we could ultimately build a lighter bike using scandium tubes. Salsa has been building bikes out of scandium for 5 years and we've gotten pretty darn good at manipulating the tubes to get the most out of it." That tubing manipulation includes flattened chain stays and seat stays for improved rear end comfort and tracking, a shaped top tube to ease shouldering, and a tapered seat tube that flares to 35mm at the bottom bracket for good drivetrain response but necks down to accept a standard 27.2mm seatpost for a softer ride. Alpha Q's top-end CX20 monocoque carbon fork holds up the front end. Finishing kit is a mix of SRAM Force and Rival, Mavic wheelsets, Dugast or Maxxis rubber, fi'zi:k contact points, as well as seatposts, stems, and handlebar out of Salsa's own parts bin. All told, Summerhill's complete bike is a reasonable 8.45kg (18.6lb) in tubular form, and the team is in the process of dropping weight by possibly going with lighter Alpha Q components. Summerhill put his scandium race machine to good use at the US Cyclo-cross Nationals in Kansas City with a third place finish that has earned him a nomination to represent the US at the UCI World Championship to be held January 26, 2008 in Treviso, Italy. Summerhill will move up this year from the Juniors category to the fiercely competitive U23 division. He will undoubtedly want to improve on last year's finish with a win and a set of rainbow stripes, but even if that mission doesn't go as planned, it's still unlikely that anyone will consider the team anything but wildly successful. PhotographyFor a thumbnail gallery of these images, click here Images by James Huang/Cyclingnews.com
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Full specificationFrame: Salsa Cycles Chili con Crosso, custom drawn scandium
tubeset Critical measurements Bottom bracket: SRAM GXP |
Wheelset: Mavic Ksyrium SL tubular Bars: Salsa Cycles Short & Shallow, 44cm (o-o) Pedals: Crank Brothers Candy Ti Total bike weight: 8.45kg (18.6lb) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
