Originally Posted by
JohnDThompson
Maybe that's why they can get away with more aggressive geometry?
The OP was saying that the '80s Colnago was described as having a more aggressive geometry than comparable modern road bikes, not the other way around.
There was a period in the '80s when some Italian bikes were built with a shorter wheelbase (i.e., a more aggressive geometry) than the standard road racing geometry of, say, French bikes or earlier Italian bikes, the idea presumably being that some Italian sprinters had asked for road frames that handled and accelerated more like track sprint frames.
At about the same time, Cannondale must have had similar requests from American sprinters, which would have been why they produced their Criterium series for a few years alongside their standard geometry road racing frames.
Speaking of Italians and Cannondale, Mario Cipollini's team was sponsored by Cannondale for a few years. Here's his spontaneous, on-road tribute: