TiHabanero

If Campagnolo had a wide range group that could handle a triple with a 24t low and a 32 low out back, surly it would be on my bike. Sure wish they had something available. Until then it is Suntour barcons mated with 7 speed freewheel and a Suntour XC Pro crank.

Probably the only one in the world that wants a Campy touring group, but Shimano brifters just don't do it for me.

Marcus_Ti

They claim it is because they only making "racing parts". Which is why the pro peloton only has...2 or 3? teams running Campagnolo and everyone else on Shimano/SRAM....

Wilfred Laurier

Shimano still offers good quality stuff for touring, and still makes bar end shifters. A freewheel and friction shifters? I don't believe you really want to get new stuff... that's some pretty dedicated ludditeism.

CliffordK

Campagnolo has sold MTB groupsets in the past.



They have also had long cage derailleurs off and on over time. The "Racing T" included a long cage rear derailleur and a triple front.

I presume those groupsets never had big sales, and they chose not to continue supporting them.

There is a lot of support for "spinning" and low gearing on road bikes today, but apparently Campagnolo hasn't followed that market for casual riders (road racing probably doesn't need the super low gears except for certain extraordinary circumstances).


Not seeing less than 34 in the front with current offerings, but an 11/32 in the rear with a few products.

https://www.cxmagazine.com/campagnol...rake-prototype
https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/.../rp-prod171270

pickettt

Campagnolo has 4X as many TDF wins as Shimano, and 20X more than SRAM. Those are the facts, distort them however you like.

nomadmax 

Campy 12 can be had with a 32/48 crank and a 11-34 out back.

Marcus_Ti

Yup...all those racked up from the Good Old Days....Then the Lance days started, and it has been basically Shimano and SRAM ever since.

alcjphil

Another numbers game. Shimano is a much bigger company sponsoring many more teams than Campagnolo. If you count Lance's wins, he was mostly riding with inferior components. Campagnolo introduced 10 speed years before Shimano did. My take is that component tech is never going to determine a TDF winner. The company sponsoring the most teams will win out

Marcus_Ti

Preaching to the choir, have a Chorus 11s bike myself. Nice stuff--but local parts and support basically don't exist.

That being said as the number of teams running it has plummeted and the OEM deals have all but evaporated at this point...rough seas ahead, in terms of keeping the lights on. Their own little corner of the market is getting yanked out from under their feet. Campagnolo went so far as to license Shimano's Centerlock for their own disc rotors.

alcjphil

I feel your pain. Lucky for me that I live a 30 minute drive from probably the best Campagnolo distributor in North America. As a result, Campagnolo equipped bikes are pretty common here and lots of shops are able and willing to be helpful.

pickettt

I think the point is that Campy has always had a niche market. I think in terms of paying customers, it’s always been a minority looking for Campy...and that minority has typically been the racing lot.

jgwilliams

Yeah, you don't even see much Campy stuff over here now, and we're much closer to their heartland. What surprises me a little, though, is that you don't see much SRAM either. Since I've never been a fan of brake levers that go sideways to shift I went for SRAM Force on my new bike, but it wasn't easy to find. If you want SRAM Red with Etap then there it's relatively easy but in the mid-range Ultegra rules supreme. And there are very few retailers settling Rival and Force groupsets.

gfk_velo

That's just about money, nothing else.

There were 3 / 18 World Tour teams on Campag in 2019, plus some additional support to teams with Fulcrum..

Alongside that there are 3 / 24 Pro-Continental, 16 Continental, 18 U-23.
That's acommitment of around 9,500 groups and around 7.600 pairs of wheels.

Not bad for a small company of around 900 employees.

If you look at market share of equipment on bikes costing over €1200 (since there is little below that price point that they equip at OE), their proportional input into World Tour is actually disproportionately high.

You also have to factor in that pro team support doesn't stop with just providing the kit - there is the specific R and D for the teams that goes in, embedded mechanics and of course, these days, in many cases, a cash contribution in the case of World Tour.

Shimano (which like Campagnolo is still a family-owned and administered business) have income from other divisions that is used in sponsorship - also true of Campagnolo but not on anything like the same scale - while SRAM have very significant capital resources outside of the Company.

So, it's legitimate for Campagnolo to point out that racing equipment is what they make ... touring has never been a big focus for them and whilst they do constantly look to the crossover areas where it's viable to extend the product range away from the pure, core business, such is the pace of development in racing equipment now, that they maintain their focus there.

gfk_velo

Centrelock is such a prevalent technology that they'd have been mad to go out on a limb and try to develop something totally new. Aditionally, in testing, Campagnolo found that Centrelock (or AFS as Campagnolo prefer to call it, for understandable reasons) was less noise-prone than 6-Bolt ISO, the available "open" standard.

Shimano, on the other hand, consulted directly with Campagnolo when they were developing their 10s, 11s and now 12s systems, to fix the relative positions of the top and bottom sprockets of the cassette - Campagnolo were already there, of course. That is, like C/L a standard that "works" and it maintains, in the racing shere, some level of safe interchangeability in terms of neutral service and so on.

It's important to look at the commercial reasons that have nothing directly to do with Campagnolo (or Shimano or SRAM for that matter) that affect why the situation is as it is.

If it was possible to control pricing through mechanisms such as MAP, smaller retailers in the US and elsewhere would be more inclined to stock and service Campagnolo - but when the margins are wafer-thin thanks to some of the bigger Internet vendors (who by and large are not playing with their own money), that is unlikely to happen. Shimano have now regulated some export sales to the US via European-based Internet vendors because they were starting to see some of the same effects in their local service and spares market.

If Campagnolo wanted to, they could shift all of their production to the Far East, in common with Shimano and SRAM and that would instantly increase their price competitiveness and so their position at OEM - not just in terms of production cost but also in terms of transport costs to main sites of assembly, import tarriff etc.

However, Campagnolo made a choice and the choice they made was to maintain the very strong links they have to their home city - and although they do now have an additional manufacturing base in Romania, all of the management there are Vicenza-trained Italians & Campagnolo's R and D, toolmaking and main commercial teams are based in Vicenza. There is a strong socail aspect to this which is not present in the same way in many manufacturers these days.

For all the negativity one sees around the apparent lack of commercial success of Campagnolo, they are still at the leading edge of technological and materials development. The only area that they lag behind in, is wireless electronic shifting and that is not because they don't have a technologically viable solution, it's because the cost of the battery technology to sustain it is not "there" yet - Shimano have the same challenge. SRAM's patents around how they preserve battery charge, whilst they slow shifting down (one of the many reasons to look at electronic is after under-load shifting, of course) are very hard to work around ...

Lemond1985

Sad.

JohnDThompson 

Campagnolo went through a very rough period in the late 80s and 90s, when Shimano managed to corner the market with their successful indexed shifting and aggressive marketing to OEMs. It wasn't just Campagnolo that suffered; almost the entire French bicycle component industry was on the ropes. Simplex, Huret, Maillard, Nervar, CLB, MAFAC, etc. either went belly-up or merged with other companies to survive. TA and Stronglight managed to hold out. Campagnolo almost went under as well, but by shedding all but the racing components managed to pull through. I think that experience has made them reluctant to diversify out of that niche.

eja_ bottecchia

Have you checked out the Potenza group?

horatio 

Anything Campy (new) that's equivalent to Claris or Sora?

Oldguyonoldbike

Both the Centaur and Potenza groupsets offer much wider gearing than Campagnolo has offered since they quit making triples (but not as low as the OP is looking for). Out here in middle America though, it's hard to come by. The options are to buy online, with all the warranty and service hassles/risks that go along with that, or go for that other brand with the brake levers that move sideways.

rebel1916

I feel like if this was actually something you were reeeeeaaaaallllly interested in, you would have picked up a Mirage triple or something.

jamesdak 

https://cycling-passion.com/tour-de-...ets-year-year/

eja_ bottecchia

Interesting article. Thanks.

Leinster

Do SRAM and Huret partially share the 3+2 wins between them? Since SRAM took over the whole Sachs-Huret manufacturing operations and all.

sumgy

I run a 32t cassette on my Moots but still have a standard crank.
I could go compact up front if I wanted (and if I could find one).

Noctilux.95

More teams in 2019 used Campy than Sram. Some people just prefer their derailleurs not failing.