As we originally reported two weeks ago, Katie Compton is seeking a title sponsor for her mountain bike and cyclocross campaign.
Katie Compton rode for Sho-Air Specialized last weekend at the Bump ‘N Grind but hasn’t yet landed a sponsor for her upcoming ‘cross season. She talked with our friends at CyclingDirt last weekend about her sponsorship search and explained her financial and equipment needs.
While finding potential equipment sponsors hasn’t been hard, getting deals done has been difficult because they don’t quite understand her needs. “We need a lot of bikes, and they don’t quite get it,” Compton explains. “We need five ‘cross bikes, Mark [her husband] needs a ‘cross bike, and we need a mountain bike, track bike, road bike. And they’re like five ‘cross bikes? How about two?”
But with her heavy-European schedule, Compton says having to ship her bikes back and forth would cost her 500 Euro a trip. “People don’t realize how much it costs to travel to races and for equipment and to pay the mortgage…it costs money to race your bike.”
Compton also explained her reputation for being very picky on equipment. On her mountain bike, she says she needs to run a double crank because the wider Q-factor of a triple crank hurts her knees. Yet component companies like SRAM require sponsored riders to ride complete gruppos. She’s optimistic that the new 2 x 10 SRAM XX gruppo would be a good solution for her knee problems.
Will the most dominant U.S. cyclocrosser find a sponsor this year? While past rumors connected Compton with several bike and component companies, she’s still trying to find the right program to race a full mountain bike and ‘cross schedule. We hope she does.
See the full interview by CyclingDirt.
