Specialized Tarmac is the admiral ship of the American bicycle manufacturer’s road bike models. According to Specialized, its stiffness-to-weight ratio is increased by 19% over the previous Tour de France winning version (refers to Andy Schleck’s 2010 Tour de France win. The original winner was Alberto Contador, he was also riding a Specialized Tarmac, but he lost his victory to Schleck due to doping).
As always, there are plenty of build options for each Specialized Tarmac model in 2014.
Another cycling-related song. This time, from Tom Waits: Broken bicycles. A very, very beautiful, romantic, and sad song. From the 1982 album named “One from the Heart”, a soundtrack album of Tom Waits’ compositions for the Francis Ford Coppola film of the same name.
Another Campagnolo 80th Anniversary Edition bike: Bianchi Oltre XR.2 “Campagnolo 80” – limited edition launched at the Eurobike 2013. The new bike features a natural carbon matt black color with silver chrome paint glossy inserts.
I received a surprise package today, a gift from a friend: three books and a micro bicycle. I won the books in a bet, actually: Alberto Contador vs Chris Froome at the Tour de France 🙂
I always liked the songs, movies, and music videos about bicycles, or those using bicycles as visual materials. Folon (meaning “in the past”) is a beautiful song from Malian artist Salif Keita. According to Wikipedia, Keita is unique not only because of his reputation as the “Golden Voice of Africa” but because he has albinism and is a direct descendant of the founder of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita.
Here is the music video of that beautiful song, enjoy.
Darren Crisp is an American framebuilder. He is building custom handmade titanium frames. Crisp has built a custom frame dedicated to Campagnolo’s 80th anniversary mechanical groupset.
Casati is an Italian bike manufacturer, building hand-made frames. To celebrate Campagnolo’s 80th anniversary, they built a hand-made, limited edition bike, equipped with Campagnolo 80th anniversary groupset. A real beauty.
I’ve inspired by GCN’s video titled “Top 10 iconic road bikes in racing history” while writing this post. I made some changes, excluded some of Daniel Lloyd’s choices, and extended the list by including a few bikes. Here are the top 12 iconic bikes in cycling history (IMHO, of course).
Robert Marchand continues to inspire us. The evergreen Frenchman has set a new goal: breaking his own hour record in the over-100s category in January 2014, at 102 years of age.
In February 2012, Marchand rode 24.25 kilometers (15.1 miles), setting a one-hour speed record in the new over-100s category created by the UCI. Then, on September 28, 2012, the ever-green Frenchman set the 100-kilometer cycling record for the 100+-year-old category, with four hours 17 minutes and 27 seconds, at the Parc de la Tête d’Or Velodrome in Lyon.
Slice RS 2014 and Slice 2014: Cannondale’s motto about their time-trial bikes is “narrow is aero”. There are three Slice RS and three Slice models are available for 2014.