iab

Exactly. Would be nice if people grasped this fact instead of blaming the bike. Armstrong is right, it is not about the bike and that's why GCN sucks, they perpetrate the myth of "bike performance".

mountaindave 

Which is why I only watch GCN for their comedic challenges or comparisons. It was about time when they started to include female hosts, but I also miss Matt Stephens as he actually grew up and raced on the bikes we now ride (and that GCN eschews or outright ridicules). His interplay and banter with Si had great chemistry and made for fun and entertaining bits.

Andy Antipas 

Si has done previous videos on vintage bikes, which has demonstrated he thinks they are rubbish. No surprise with the "findings" in this video.

Lots of issues and inconsistencies with the bike and Si's shoes! I wonder why Si even took part in the video?

This video is better:

iab

What I would like to see is van der Poel on the Merckx and Si on whatever wonder-bike go up that hill to see Si dropped like a bag of sand. That would be entertaining.

Trakhak

To use the example of Merckx in 1974 to dismiss Si's riding ability is a bit unfair. That said, he is in pretty good shape, based on previous videos. For example, GCN did a series of videos with the objective of finding out how many riders drafting each other on modern road bikes it would take to beat Si's performance on a modern TT bike over the same course. They started with two in the first video, then used three in the next, etc.

To everyone's disbelief, it finally took a team of four or five (can't remember which) of the road bike guys, including one pro rider, to beat Si, who maintained an average of about 500 watts of power ouput throughout his rides (until the last one, which was ridden the day after he'd done a hard 90 miler, though, as he said, that's no excuse).

Three friends and I drove from New Haven to Montreal to see the Worlds in 1974. Rode from our motel to the race course, where we pedaled around for a while, watching the riders warming up before the big event. (When Luis Ocana rode by, we yelled in chorus, "Louieeeee!" He glanced over, then flicked his fingers out for a little wave without taking his hands out of the drops.)

We staked out a great spot at a corner midway up the major climb. The details are a bit fuzzy now, but I think I remember that the Belgian team strategy seemed to be to send one guy off the front at a time, drawing out at least one French rider each time. I would have known little or nothing about team tactics at that time, so I'm probably remembering what I was told by the French family next to us, who had set up a little picnic-like arrangement, with blankets, folding chairs, cooler, and battery-powered TV to watch the live feed from the local TV station.

Aside from the racing action (Raymond Poulidor, who had been off in a solo breakaway on the final lap, was caught by Merckx on the Mt. Royal climb, right in front of us!), my most vivid memory was of the two young daughters of that French family, who had a chalkboard where they wrote time splits from the TV coverage for the breakaway riders to read as they rode by---all except the last lap, where the girls were too excited to do anything but write, in big letters, ALLEZ!!!!!.

Andy_K 

You have to recognize that GCN (in videos like this) is essentially Top Gear for bikes. If you take it seriously, you won't enjoy it. It's a lot of dry humour mixed with interesting information. I think they're employing the unreliable narrator motif. The race coverage on GCN+ is outstanding though.

repechage

then the video was just bad set up and bad acting.

martl

Also note that it is a recent fashion to include those ridiculous supersteep sections in the major tours (ok the Giro had a period in the eighties where they did something similar -which caused even Big Mig to don a triple which he then never used- in order to gain profile against the overwhelming Le Tour). Apart from that, mainly "normal gradients had to be climbed, typically 6-8% inclination with the odd 10-12 maybe 14% section. But no one included 26% on the tour.
now, given you are Pantani and able to climb the Stelvio in one hour flat, which is 26km long, that means you average 26km/h and no one needs a Granny gear for that. (Alpe d'Huez he averaged 23,8)
If you are not Pantani but a mortal Pro, you still would climb that at an average of 20-22

iab

Agreed. Except of course the unfortunate business with Robbie McEwen.

bikingshearer 

If they had Cat 5s in the 80's, I would have been a Cat 7 or 8.

Andy_K 

But he was literally talking about fudge, so I think your choice of the word "unfortunate" is an accurate description of the situation.

repechage

I had to read an article in The Guardian to get hip. In sum I am happy to not be an even lazy sports fan now.

P!N20

Or never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

Fredo76

That was a pretty lame video.

Not as lame as the one 'proving' that light wheels don't make any difference, but pretty lame.

bamboobike4

I have a frameset like van der Poel’s father rode on the Prologue in 1982.
I’d like to put younger vdP on that and Si on dad’s TT bike, and drop the flag.
Then again, put me on either bike and I'd be "out of frame" in seconds, and not the good way.

martl

this is an actually enjoyable video done by someone who is used to riding vintage steel.

Spoiler: Remarkably small differences between the bikes

velomateo

I did, and the parts where Si gets a bike fit, has the frame built to his specs, then source the all the parts from some guys stash of NOS Campy were interesting. Although I cringed a bit when they badge the newly built frame as an Eddy Merckx. I think they missed an opportunity to have some fun with the paint. I think it would have been cool to create a head badge with Si's face, with some sort of GCN logo in Merckx font - all of this with the classic white and red of the Faema livery.
After that, they went back to the foolery of riding TT gears up hill.
I'm waiting for the next video when Si takes his aero carbon super bike up that same climb, turning the gear inch equivalent of what he rode on the "Merckx".

Germany_chris

The real fun part is you can buy both brand new, even if they were both the same price I know what I'd buy.

https://www.bike24.com/p246529.html?...0ma&source=SBP

repechage

That is Not a NOS front brake caliper.
it's a mess. Rust, pads worn out.
adjusted very open, sounded terrible also.



for a bike allegedly built to his measure he had the saddle slammed back. A miss.

Andy_K 

Just because they have a fancy studio and a YouTube channel with a lot of subscribers doesn't mean they know what they're doing.

embankmentlb

These old vs new videos are somewhat amusing but mostly just annoying. The reviewers almost always complain about narrow gearing and narrow tire width. Who sets out with the goal to climb the steepest hill with a 13-23 and then complains about it? Why do they set out to ride on rough roads with 21 mm tires and then complain? True we mostly rode that way back in the day but we did have alternatives if needed. The reviewers could even things up a bit by putting 21 mm tires and a streight block on their modern rig. That however would not make things near as interesting.

smd4

Didn't see all the issues without a screen grab, but I did notice the brakes were terribly adjusted. I was thinking they did that just to make it clear to the viewers that the calipers moved...Exaggerated for effect, so to speak.

Putting the saddle back on the rails is a common adjustment to be made.

RiddleOfSteel

I made it through a little over half the video before hanging it up. I like Si, and GCN is a fun channel. Manon and Co. are a fun bunch. I've seen Si in previous vintage vs. modern comparisons and he remains consistent in his refusal to even partially adapt to any of these vintage luminaries. The "painstaking" "restoration" was a joke, as a few of you have pointed out. He's in freaking Europe! The ability to find good Campy stuff is even easier!

I know a lot of us have modernized vintage bikes, and to their benefit. GCN doesn't do that, which doesn't surprise me. It is a TV-type show, with plenty of inconsistencies. A few absolute gems of episodes do find their way to the public, and I am very appreciative of those. So are the silly fun ones and challenges. This one was another predictable annoyance where my main takeaway was that I really liked the frameset with its huge tire clearances and sport-touring chain stay length. With 32-35mm tires, that bike would be MONEY in ride quality.

repechage

consider he was measured and the bike was built for Him. Unless he decided after that he did not like the position and made the adjustment after, like the bars as well, major fail for a bespoke bike. If one bought an existing frame and that is what it took to make it work...
OK.
brakes were really open, riders preference let's say. The pads are worn, really worn, ok but the embedded aluminum shards that could be heard as he arrives with a stop... the NOS Campagnolo parts, not those brakes. Poor cosmetics, so poor as to indicate to me good chance they were not disassembled, lubricated and adjusted prior to fitment.
think of this, you are the mechanic prepping the bike for a video, that careless? Unfortunate.
replacement pads are available.
lastly, riding with those calipers that open places the brake lever beyond max mechanical advantage under moderate to hard braking.
the fix was in.

image a freeze and screen capture from the video. The rust just points to the level of care. And kills the NOS claim at the beginning of the vid.

Andy_K 

I watched the GCN+ video about the making of the bike. It struck me as a lot more fair than the hill climb video. Si himself seemed a lot more into the bike in that video than he does in the hill climb video, at least until he got to the part where he rode it up a hill. On the other hand, he did make some of the same ridiculous sort of comments, including listing a number of significant historic bikes he's had the chance to ride and saying the thing they had in common was that they all felt a bit rubbish. The GCN+ video has interviews with Terry Dolan, Pippa York, and Sid Barras. They all say the main advantages the modern bike would have are aerodynamics, stiffness, and weight. Dolan says the steel bike will be better descending, which Si kind of agrees with when riding except for being afraid of the brakes. Pippa York says their performance as a racer would have probably been about the same with a modern bike because it's all about the rider. Sid Barras made some ridiculous claim that he'd have won more races if he'd had a modern carbon bike (and presumably his opponents did not). Given that he was a sprinter I guess maybe there's something to that.