Today, Giovanni Pinarello, the founder of the Pinarello bicycles has died at 92. The death of the Italian framebuilder has been announced on the Italian bike manufacturer’s Facebook page.
This year there’s no Colnago-Ferrari road bike, instead, there’s a 27.5” mountain bike: Colnago for Ferrari CF12. The bike built on a carbon monocoque frame with Shimano XT drivetrain and wheels, and Geax AKA 27.5” tires. (see notes 1)
Recently retired Jens Voigt will attack the Hour Record on September 18, announced the Trek Factory Racing team. He will attempt to break Ondřej Sosenka’s 49.7-kilometer mark, which was set in 2005. The attempt will happen in the Vélodrome Suisse in Grenchen.
The hour record for bicycles is the record for the longest distance cycled in one hour on a bicycle.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary, the California-based bicycle manufacturer Specialized has produced a lugged-steel limited edition Allez frame, in collaboration with Mark DiNucci, one of their original frame builders.
There will be only 74 pieces of the Limited Edition Specialized Allez (the company was founded in 1974), and they will be auctioned on eBay on September 8th for supporting World Bicycle Relief.
On September 2, 1994, Miguel Indurain broke the Hour Record at the Velodrome du Lac, Bordeaux, France. “Big Mig” covered 53.040 km in an hour.
Colnago is celebrating 60 years of frame production with a special bike, as usual. The new Colnago C60 Limited edition is based on the chassis of Colnago C60, with some changes. The most obvious modifications are the graphics and paint job and the titanium plaque with the serial number of each bike.
Futuristic, sharp, and maybe a bit weird: over the last few days a lot of people talking about Swiss bike manufacturer BMC’s new Impec concept bike, which unveiled at the Eurobike 2014 in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
BMC is a producer that always seeks new probabilities, one good example is the previous BMC Impec Lamborghini edition. Defining their goal as “zero error in the production phase”, “handmade by machines” is the motto of BMC impec, referring to their use of customized industrial robotics in an automatized and controlled process to assemble advanced carbon fiber composites at high degrees of precision.
Today’s historic photo of the day: Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali smoking cigars in “Totò al Giro d’Italia” (Totò in Giro d’Italia), a 1948 Italian comedy film directed by Mario Mattoli and starring Totò.
We lost Alfredo Martini, a pro cyclist from Fausto Coppi‘s era, yesterday (August 25, 2014).
Martini was born on 18 February 1921 in Florence, Tuscany. He was a professional between 1941 and 1957. He won the Tour of the Apennines in 1947, the Giro del Piemonte in 1950, and a stage in the 1950 Giro d’Italia (stage 2, a 245 km -152 mi- running from Salsomaggiore Terme to Martini’s home town, Florence). He finished 1950 Giro in third place, after the winner Hugo Koblet and the second finisher Gino Bartali. He also wore the race leader’s pink jersey “maglia rosa” during stage 8.
Today’s historic photo of the day: the first-ever stage ascent of Col du Tourmalet in Tour de France (1910), Octave Lapize of the Alcyon team walks over the summit and goes on to win the Tour. When he passed the organizer’s car atop the Tourmalet, he screamed “Vous êtes des assassins! Oui, des assassins!” (French for “You are murderers! Yes, murderers!”)
The courses of the Tour de France in 1907, 1908, and 1909 had been nearly identical. But in 1910, the Pyrenees were included, an initiative from Adolphe Steinès, who had drawn the course for the Tour de France since the first Tour in 1903.