We had a chance to sit down with Swiss cross country pro Nathalie Schneitter of Team Rose Vaujany and talk about her World Cup race bike setup. Schneitter races a couple of different bikes from Rose, full-suspension or hardtail depending on the course, but often ends up coming back to her Rose Psycho Path for its straight forward light and fast approach. The roughly 1200g 650b carbon hardtail has served the team well for just over a year, and doesn’t see any major changes for 2016.
Jump past the break for a look at some of her unique setup details…
Nathalie Schneitter is definitely a member of the slam your stem club. With a 27.5″ wheel, a 100mm fork, an average height headtube, and a zero rise Ritchey C220 Trail stem, she still needed to get lower for an aggressive XC position. Not only is the top cover of the headset left off, but the 168cm/5′-6″ tall Schneitter runs her Ritchey Trail Flat bar in the -5mm position to get her grips where she needs them.
Taking a cue from weight weenies of old she uses Cinelli cork road bar tape double wrapped in place of standard grips. This side needs a refresh after half a season of racing, but Schneitter was curious after seeing the setup on one of her teammates bikes. She tried it, loved it, and probably isn’t going back anytime soon. In addition to saving weight, it’s very easy to get the exact thickness you want by how they get wrapped. And while durability is obviously an issue, it’s easy and cheap to refresh as needed. Her DT Swiss OPM fork gets a race upgrade with extra slippery seals from SKF Racing. Previously we’d only seen seals from SKF in green and blue which had helped them stand out, so this black version was new to us.
For drivetrain Schneitter’s Psycho Path is more off the shelf, sticking with a SRAM X01 shifter, rear derailleur, and 32T crankset. Pedals are the new XTR 990s. Braking is by Formula R1s, and DT finishes out the build with XRC 1250 wheels and RWS thru-axles.
Schneitter also chatted with us about racing cross in the offseason. She just started last year a few times on Rose’s previous cross bike, but enjoyed it and was looking forward to trying out the new Team DX Cross that we sampled earlier this summer. With the number of disc brake road bikes in Rose’s line-up, we were also curious to hear that Schneitter and all of the guys on the Rose Vaujany mountain team that we talked to train on the road with rim brakes. They said that since they spend so much of their time getting loose on mountain bikes, their road riding is pretty tame, and the rim brake calipers serve them well enough.
