Picking up where I left off last week, the
first grouping of bicycles is going to branch off in a couple directions as I
start with Eddy Merckx’s Colnago Super, which is in his Molteni team’s famous
orange. The Belgian master and his team mechanic, Ernesto Colnago himself, were
well-known as being particular about equipment, especially weight savings, and
the Campagnolo crankset and brake levers on this bike are drilled out to remove
excess material. The seatpost and stem have grooves cut into them for the same reason, and under the bartape the
handlebars kinda look like Swiss cheese!
A fall-out between the two cycling legends
occurred, mostly because of an incident during Merckx’s successful 1972 Hour Record
attempt in Mexico City. “The Cannibal” was paid to put Windsor labels on his
Colnago bike, which of course didn’t please Ernesto, as this was his shining
moment as a frame builder. Merckx suggested that it was a “polite thing to do”
for the people there, as Windsor was a Mexican bike manufacturer, but in the
face of the payment, that seems a bit weak.
Merckx went on to form an equally successful
partnership with builder Ugo DeRosa, who became an advisor when Eddy began to
build and sell his own line of bicycles. In 1989 Merckx began supplying bikes
to the American 7-Eleven cycling team, a relationship that lasted through 1996
and the team’s change to Motorola as the lead sponsor. Below is one of the
team’s 1989 bikes, which unfortunately didn’t help them to many wins that season,
although 7-Eleven did claim the overall victory in the inaugural Tour de Trump,
a self-aggrandizing title for a bike race if there ever was one. Should we
really have expected anything different from “Our Supreme Blow-hard”?
Proudly manufactured in Belgium, Merckx
bikes have grown to be one of the world’s most prestigious brands, and have
been ridden by historic teams like Panasonic, Kelme and Telekom. Below is an
EMX-7 ridden by multiple Flanders and Roubaix champion Tom Boonen for the Quick
Step team in 2011.
The split with Merckx didn’t really ruin Ernesto
Colnago’s career either, as the talented framebuilder hooked up with cycling
greats like Giuseppe Saronni and Johan Museeuw, plus the rest of the Belgian
star’s extremely successful Mapei team (which ironically later became Quick
Step). It was the Colnago C40 that really sparked the carbon fiber revolution
because it proved the material’s durability, with not only Franco Ballerini’s Paris-Roubaix win in 1995, but four victories over the cobbles in five
years, including (get this) three
times sweeping the podium!
Ernesto
could have produced something
futuristic with swooping curves, but his design featured traditional straight
tubes and carbon lugs. However, a real artisan’s touch was put on the finish -
pages and pages of beautiful handpainted C40 frames adorned the
Colnago catalogue, each version requiring hours of painstaking masking and
airbrushing. There was a particular design destined to become THE Colnago C40 paint
scheme, the Mapei team model with its tumbling multi-colored cubes. Below is
one such C40, on which Johan Museeuw won his second Paris-Roubaix in 2000.
Despite the incredible success with Mapei, Colnago
has dipped in and out of World Tour racing, choosing to mostly support Pro
Continental and American domestic teams in recent years. Fortunately, the
storied Italian builder returned to the main stage as bicycle supplier to UAE
Team Emirates, with none other than Giuseppe Saronni as manager! Here is the
Colnago C60 team machine:
Yes, the French company, LOOK, were pioneers
in the development of clipless pedals, but they were also putting the first
carbon framesets into pro races with the 1986 La Vie Claire squad.
Unfortunately, because team leader Bernard Hinault hated the cobbles, the bikes
were mostly thought of as lightweight “climber’s bicycles”, which isn’t exactly
a bad thing when you have pros like “The Badger” and up-and-coming Americans
like Greg Lemond and Andy Hampsten!
Lemond and Hinault pulled off an incredible
1-2 finish at that year’s Tour de France, aboard Look’s Hinault 753 model bike.
Note: the Le Vie Claire bike was equipped with full Campagnolo C-Record gruppo,
including the famous Delta brakes, but the builder of the machine shown has
left out the costly and mechanically quirky calipers.
I am a vintage
bike guy, but I have always found the Look 795 to be one of the most visually
stunning bicycles ever made. The bike has been featured in this blog before, and
the machine includes multiple patented innovations, such as brakes integrated into the fork blades, a one-piece crankset and adjustable integrated stem. I
also love the Piet Mondrian (you know, the French artist who inspired the
Partridge Family bus paintjob) color scheme - the $11,450 price tag would be
the main reason you won’t see me zipping around on one!
Speaking of Greg Lemond, who will ever
forget watching him fly around the streets of Paris to win the 1989 Tour by
eight seconds over an emotionally-crushed Laurent Fignon? The American used
this fairly simple Bottecchia Kronostrada frameset, but by equipping it with
the Scott Clip-On Aerobars, he achieved a position to let him slip
better through the air than with the traditional cow-horn bars used in time trials
during that era.
Keen-eyed readers will also notice the bike
is equipped with the Mavic 631 “Starfish” crankset and other SSC-series
components by the French company, which have also been a feature in this blog.
In a Tour de France history predominantly marked by victories on bikes using
components by Campagnolo and Simplex (with a bit of recent Shimano thrown in), 1989 marks the only overall win by a cyclist using Mavic-equipped bicycles - and
it may remain the only, since Mavic no longer makes components.
The 2013 Bottecchia Cronotholon provides an
amazing contrast to Lemond’s machine, as it includes all of the modern
technological advances, most notably the aero shaping of the carbon fiber tubes
and the fully integrated stem with the multi-positional bars. The seat tube
also has a slightly more vertical position, as this particular bike has
geometry advantageous to the triathlete, who would want a more forward position
to lessen tension on the quadriceps and hamstrings, saving those muscles for the later running portion of the race.
The 1976 Wilier-Triestina “Gioiello Ramato” (copper
jewel) has also been featured in this blog, as the orange cromovelato is a personal favorite. Created under the direction of
Mario Dal Molin in the late 1940s for his Bassano cycling team, the color was
meant to stand out against the traditional paint colors of other Italian
builders at the time. He wanted something to capture the attention of fans who
would flock to see team leader Fiorenzo Magni win the 1948 Giro d’Italia, and
indeed the shiny finish has become an enduring symbol of the company.
This is a special version of the 2017 Wilier
Cento10 Air aero race bike ridden by Filippo Pozzato, leader of the
Wilier-Triestina-Selle Italia pro continental team, to celebrate the 100th Giro d’Italia. Its ramato roots are
obvious! Hey, “Pippo” was thinking of retirement at the end of this season, so perhaps he won't really need this bike anymore...maybe I’ll get in touch!
I’ll finish this entry up with a pairing that
is a bit of an introduction to next week’s projects, as I recently acquired a
Gios-Torino Super Record, though not up to the standards of Roger de
Vlaeminck’s 1976 version. The talented Belgian strangely missed out on a
Paris-Roubaix victory that year (he won FOUR times in his career), he did
manage to win his second Giro di Lombardia, four stages of the Giro d’Italia
and overall at the Tirreno-Adriatico (among other races).
The famous Gios Blue emerged from a
partnership with the Brooklyn Chewing Gum company and the colors used on their
“stars and stripes” team jerseys. After an amazing run of victories by de
Vlaeminck on the bicycles he supplied, Aldo Gios clung strongly to the blue and
in the following years produced bikes almost exclusively in that color.
The 2017 Aerolight is similar in color only,
as it features carbon monocoque construction with wind-cheating tube shapes and internal cable
routing. Gios supplied these bicycles to last season’s Manzana Postobon pro
continental team.
No comments :
Post a Comment