ch9862

Strange question, perhaps .

I'm trying to find info about any bike Eddy Merckx rode to victory in any of the grand tours - brand, size, components, colors; pics would be great. Googling got me flooded with bikes with "Merckx" on the downtube - clearly not what I want. Any help appreciated =).

Picchio Special

Here's a link to one of Eddy's De Rosa's:

https://www.vintagevelos.com/merckx73.html


During his prime, Merckx rode bikes built by Masi, Colnago, De Rosa, and Kessels, as well as some lesser-known builders like Giuseppe Pela and Marcel van der Est. Geometry varied a fair amount, and while components were Campagnolo with Cinelli bar and stem, styles and details (i.e. pantographing, drilling, milling) varied quite a bit.

chewybrian 

Not really the one you asked about, but a great one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:E...RecordBike.jpg

https://vodpod.com/watch/795655-eddy-...e-de-hora-1972

"...Eddy, Eddy, Eddy..."

tashi

You planning on bidding?:

https://cgi.ebay.com/F-Kessels-Eddy-M...3%3A1|294%3A50

I'm keeping my eyes open for a wall hanger, too bad I don't have anything in my wallet right now...

Picchio Special

That's a beauty. Evokes Eddy's Fiat days - not his best, but some of his best looking bikes, IMO. I'd love to go after it, but my wallet's not leveraging my left cheek these days either.

soderbiker

. heres one
Eddy link

one more that might be of interest
IMDB

hhabca

I'm always surprised at how little info seems to be out there about Eddy and his bikes, at least on the web in English. Perhaps there's a site in French or Belgium that has more info? I think that finding out what equipment he rode on a daily basis would be difficult if not impossible. Maybe there's a retired team mechanic out there that has a diary of his setup prior to the the start of each race, or at least monthly?
I don't think that Kessels bike on eBay is anything too special - maybe better than some of the Falcon versions, but I don't think the Kessels is a team bike. It is pretty cool to see that the frame size of that DeRosa is exactly the same as one of my bikes!

Picchio Special

At the time, I doubt the people involved knew that anyone 30 years later would care about the exact bikes Eddy rode. The thing about Eddy that made him different from other pros was the number of bikes he went through - sometimes 15 or more in a season, especially after his track accident, when his search for a position that would not aggrevate his back was near constant. They were built by a number of builders, in a range of geometries, and all labeled (unhelpfully when trying to identify them later) "Eddy Merckx." And the little details of each were slightly different even when the builders were the same, as one would expect from custom work. Sometimes, good photos of specific bikes tell the tale - there was an edition of Cycle Sport several years ago with a number of great pics. One is of a bike that can only be a '71 Colnago - it matches detail for detail. Other times, though, some details are evident in photos while others are obscured. Sometimes, tubing decals are a giveaway - you can probably assume that the Columbus decaled bikes during the De Rosa years are indeed De Rosas, while the Reynolds decaled bikes (like those in the film "Sunday in Hell") are Kessels. While Eddy rode Campagnolo and Cinelli, details of those components - i.e. lightening and pantographing - often seem to vary bike-by-bike as well.
I agree that the Kessels is not a team bike, but I think it's a pretty sweet replica of a Fiat team bike. That milled post with the panto spade is neat; it matches one I have in a photo of Eddy riding Amstel Gold in '73 (ironically on what is likely a De Rosa). It's way better than any of the Falcon "Eddy Merckx" bikes - and built by someone who did build a lot of Eddy's race bikes, probably more than any other individual builder. On the other hand, there is a replica Molteni bike built by Brian Baylis (maybe still an active listing but likely ended) on which many of the details are wrong - top tube cable braze ons (which Eddy doesn't appear to have used even late in his career when they were common in the pro peloton) and a number of incorrect components. Personally, I'd rather have the Kessels replica than the Baylis/Molteni one, even though the Baylis is doubtless a notch or two better in terms of workmanship.

Reynolds 

Isn't the custom that the brake cables cross behind the handlebar?

Picchio Special

Yes.

oldbobcat

This one's kinda small, so I'm sure it's a replica. Would be a nice sunny-day rider for someone about two inches shorter than Eddy.

purevl

What does he put in his nose and on his neck?

chewybrian 

I would guess Vick's Vapo-Rub or something like it, to keep his nose clear--just a guess.

soderbiker

i would imagine that its some sort of strong herbal tincture.

miamijim

My guess? Liquid cocaine. Back in the day, drug use was rampant in cycling wuth many riders sucking on cocoa leaves for a little extra edge.

A bike that stires things up are Eddys Peugeots, many claim they wre rebadged but who realy knows...

Picchio Special

Well, Eddy really knows, and he has indicated that some were stock Peugeots and some were Masis. Makes sense and matches what photos are out there. No big mystery or cause for debate, IMO.

miamijim

I havent heard of him saying they were the real deal until now. Good to know!!

Picchio Special

Several years ago, Eddy provided collector Brett Horton with a list of the builders of bikes he rode during his career, year by year. I think it should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, but based on the list, I do think it pretty certain that Eddy did ride stock Peugeots at least some of the time, and pretty near certain that Eddy's relationship with Masi predated his move to Faema. Makes sense, since it's pretty well documented (for example by his former mechanic in "Put Me Back On My Bike," and in Masi literature) that Tom Simpson had some of his "Peugeot" frames made for him by Masi as well.

soderbiker

"Brett Horton" has a list ?
is there any possibility to have a look at this list , is it public ?
Cheers
T

Picchio Special

Just click on the link to the Kessels on ebay provided in tashi's post above. The list is included in the item description.

hhabca

So where exactly are Eddy's old race bikes? Is there a museum in Belgium with a few of them? Private collectors? Does he still have a few of them (I hope so)? What about his trophies etc.? He could fill a museum with just those. I guess at the time the bikes might have been sold off as old race bikes, but surely by the time he won a TdF or 2 they would have been collected for what they were? Frankly, what about all the other greats - where are their bikes? I know - that's a big question, but I guess I'm wondering if there is a pro-racing museum someplace in Europe holding a variety of bikes and other stuff. If there isn't one, well I think there should be.

(That Baylis reproduction looks great to me - shows how little I know about the little details!)

Picchio Special

I'm hardly an expert in this area, but I believe Eddy still has some of his race bikes - perhaps quite a few (and he has certainly retained a lot of trophies and other memorablia from his career). As I wrote above, Eddy went through a lot of bikes in a season, and my earlier number of 15 was likely low by as much as half. I think a couple of Eddy's bikes were also in a local museum in Belgium, and may still be there. Which seems to be the case with a lot of former pro bikes, unfortunately - they wind up in museums that aren't really dedicated to vintage racing bikes or cyclists, but, for example, to transportation in general, or regional/local history. I think even the provenance of the bikes is open to question in some cases. Some are in private collections, and here again, provenance varies from very solid to very sketchy. There has been a more recent attempt to create a museum dedicated to bicycle racing history next to the famous Madonna del Ghisallo chapel in Italy (which I believe has at least one of Eddy's race bikes), but it seems to have recently encountered some economic difficulties. A shame, really. Some bikes certainly reside with the families of former pros, too. In most cases, provenance is a real nightmare for collectors like Brett Horton, who is certainly documenting them for others to enjoy, to pin down.
In the case of many of Eddy's bikes, they were ridden across more than one season, in some cases, and forks from one builder may have been used with frames from another. Again, Eddy wasn't thinking about documenting his career as it developed. It would be interesting to know if a bike that had served him well in the Tour de France, for example, would have been tucked away in his basement at the time, or selected for use in other races as particularly worthy.
Edit: And bike builders sometimes keep pro's bikes, especially when they've won big races. Conago has a museum of this type, as does Bianchi. Even in those cases, it's not always true that every component can be trusted as original: the Bianchi on which Gimondi won the '73 Worlds has the wrong rear derailleur on it.

ParaWK4

The Colnago website suggests that Eddy rode their frames at one time. Attached is a frame spec sheet I got off their website a while ago.

frameteam2003

JanHeine's new book "The Competition Bicycle"shows Eddy's 1974 world championships bicycle built by Ugo DE Rosa

spike666c

List of bikes ridden obtained directly from Eddy by Brett Horton, and it is as follows:

1965 - Superia (stock bike)
1966 - Peugeot (stock bike)
1967 - Peugeot (stock bike) and Masi
1968 - Masi
1969 - Marcel Van der Este (Belgian builder)
1970 - Pella (or Pello) Torino, Italy [This is probably Guiseppe Pela, who rarely built bikes under his own name but was a legendary Italian builder]
1971 - Colnago and Kessels
1972 - Colnago and Kessels
1973 - Colnago and Kessels
1974 - DeRosa and Kessels
1975 - DeRosa and Kessels
1976 - DeRosa and Kessels
1977 - DeRosa

*****

Kessels? Who was Kessels? A Google shows only a road in Brisbane, Australia.


*****

Information about Kessels

Here is what I know about Kessels from personal experience:


My first 10-speed bike was a St-Etienne, a sort of Gitane clone, in 1971. The next year my uncle in Belgium wrote me and said he could get a good deal on a racing bike from a friend of his, was I interested? It would cost about $125. I said sure, sounds interesting. So he brings this Eddy Merckx. First off, it's much too small for me. It has Simplex derailleurs, Weinmann sidepulls, and the frame, although it's made using Bocama lugs and has pretty tight geometry (for those days) is obviously common steel, with stamped dropouts. But it had Nisi rims and sew-ups, very exciting, although the hubs are Atoms with wingnuts. A bike for a beginner racer in Belgium, in other words. In terms of performance, it's light-years ahead of 99% of the bikes in town, but for an American teenager just getting into the Bike Boom, it's a bit disappointing. The quest for a longer seatpost is what led me to Thomas Avenia's old shop in Spanish Harlem, on 116th street. What a dungeon! He tells me there are two sizes of Campagnolo seat posts, 27.2 and 26.8. I take a guess at the larger size, which of course proves way too big. My father takes it on his next visit to a merchant ship and has the on-board machine-shop take it down on a lathe. That was a fun bike, got me used to tight racing gears and glueing on tubulars, and that Molteni orange sure stood out.

The next year, 1973, I went back to the Old Country, Belgium. My uncle promised to hook me up with his friend, mr. Kessels, who happened to be an old army buddy. The shop in Ostend was where the offices were, but also where bikes were assembled; the frames were built at another location, in a small village in the countryside (Gistel?). Kessels was the company name, but they had bought the rights to the names of several defunct racing marques, Alcyon and Main D'Or most notably, and sold their bikes under those names. They had been making bikes for Merckx since 1971, and they had recently secured the contract for Belgium and Holland, to sell bikes under the Eddy Merckx name. As was common in those days, the shop had no bikes for sale, just some floor models; you ordered the actual bike and it was made for you in a couple of weeks. My uncle took me to see his friend, who I believe was the younger bother of the founder. As a joke, I had brought a Schwinn catalog to show him. He was a bit puzzled by the Varsity, but his verdict on the Paramount was quick: "looks nice, but a bit old-fashioned, don't you think?" He showed me two frames: the basic semi-pro model, which had Reynolds 531 main tubes and Suntour dropouts, with solid but basic workmanship, and the top-of-the-line model, full Reynolds with Campy dropouts, cutout bottom bracket and very nice finish work, including a beautifully done semi-wrapover seat cluster. He was obviously very proud of it. He explained that his builder was inspired by the simple lines and tight geometry of the new Italian bikes, Masi, Colnago, Poghliaghi etc..

I explained to him that my budget was limited to $350. He said "No problem, I will put together something nice, a top frame with parts that are OK but that you can upgrade later. Come back in two weeks." In those two weeks another uncle managed to get me into the team car of a minor professional team for a "kermesse" race in the countryside, the coach was an army buddy as well (that's one of the benefits of universal, compulsory military service, you make a lot of connections) that was eye-opening. I decided that racing was not for me. Also, I visited another builder/retailer, in Ghent. Plum Vainqueur was the name, they sponsored one of the teams I had seen. They offered me a nice full-Reynolds all-Zeus equipped bike for $350. It was impressive, but very old-fashioned compared to the Kessels bikes, with fancy chromed lugs and Cinelli-style fork crown. At the end of two weeks, I went back to Kessels to take a look. My bike was in the back of a van; it had just come back from the test ride. Turns out that every racing bike they build gets a spin on the local track.

The Kessels company was fairly large for Belgium, not as large as Flandria but not a small boutique either. They sold the full range of bikes, from single-speed town bikes to racing, all made to order for the local market, although they obviously mass-produced stuff for export and especially for re-branding. In those days it was still the custom for bike shops to sell bikes under their name, a hold-over from the days not so long ago when they actually built them. In fact, the traditional name for bike shop in Flanders was "Velo-Maaker", bicycle builder. I remember seeing a stack of primed, unpainted frames in Kessels' truck, probably destined for the house brand market.

When I finally got a look at it, the frame was slightly different from either of the ones he had shown me. It had the great worksmanship of the top model, but the sticker said Reynolds main tubes (and fork) only. The Campy dropouts were chromed, with eyelets. The fork had reinforcing tangs on the inside (wheel side) of the blades, like the semi-pro model, but chromed Campy tips without eyelets. The frame had two large circular cutouts in he bottom bracket, and no braze-ons except for the rear derailleur cable stop. The inside of the right rear chainstay was chromed.

Per my request, he had used only European components. Kessels was quite a fan of Japanese components even back then, he thought the price/quality ratio was excellent. This made sense, because in Europe at the time it was not considered neccesary for every beginner racer to have a full-Campagnolo Colnago, unlike in the US at the time. Kids started racing on quite modest bikes, and concentrated on the craft and the training, not on the latest equipment. But this attitude towards the Japanese leads me to believe that he may have been using Ishiwata tubing on at least some of the semi-pro frames. Anyway, my bike had TA Professional cranks, Huret Jubilee derailleurs, Weinmann 500 sidepulls, Nisi rims and Tipo low flange hubs. Over the years I ended up replacing everything, but I noticed that the items that I never needed to replace (except by choice) were the ones where the bike came in contact with my body: Cinelli bars and stem, Cinelli saddle, Maillard pedals. It was a very comfortable bike from the beginning, even though it was also stiffer than anything else I'd ever ridden.

Kessels explained that he had given me the best frame possible, and judiciously economized on the components so as to meet my budget. I could always upgrade later. It was a beautiful bicycle, very elegant and modern-looking for its time. I still have it, much modified towards the touring side. The only thing that was disappointing was the paint job; it flaked and chipped very quickly, and I ended up having it repainted by a local frame-builder who also added braze-ons for levers and racks. I was tired of the Molteni orange, and chose blue, but got original decals from Belgium to finish it off.

A year later, at the 1974 New York bike show, Falcon displayed a bike that had been ridden by Merckx in the 1973 Giro (he skipped the Tour that year). It looked authentic, being the right frame size and pretty beat up. The frame was identical to my Kessels in nearly every detail; the exceptions were these: no chrome or eyelets on the dropouts, and three circular holes in the bottom bracket instead of two. It was obviously a Kessels bike. The next year the bike they displayed was the World Championship bike, and I believe it was a De Rosa.

Recently I asked my uncle what had happened to Kessels. Turns out his friend died
a while ago, and the family closed up shop about 20 years ago. His son, Koen Kessels, is a succesful classical musician in Belgium.