joe englert

I always heard the Lemond rode a carbon Look badged Bottecchia in his ADR days. This i know is true, however, i believe he DID ride a steel Carnielli Bottecchia as well. What proof do i have? The best. Check out the cover of his book!! Shows him right on the cover the the "real deal steel". At least as far as my inspection of it goes. He is even wearing he yellow jersey.

zonatandem

Many riders rode custom bikes, with decals from who-ever paid them to ride the thing.

Lenton58 

Yeah ... I was shocked the other day when I read that Sean Kelly was known to have refused the sponsored rides his team was using and insisted on his service de cors Vitus 979 that he painted and badged to conform with the team's sponsorship.

MetinUz

I understood this was quite common even back in the day. For instance, Merckx rode Peugeot's for the first few years of his pro career, but only the first year was real PX-10. After that Masi's badged as PX-10, probably others as well. And I thought Lemond's steel bikes were done by Della Santa ?

Lenton58 

I wonder if someone has written a history of all this stuff. Even if one had a collection of the magazines and velo broadsheets of the time, these things might never be apparent. Fascinating, but definitely a niche interest. But one may wonder why. Why indeed ... when to consider that according to something I've heard and repeated ... Le Tour de France is one of the most followed sporting events on the planet. Was then ... is now.

Picchio Special

LeMond rode frames made by Roland Della Santa during much of his career. The carbon frames he rode with La Vie Claire were made by TVT. I dn't know the specifics of his ADR bikes, but someone here probably does - one of the Bottecchia fans perhaps.
BTW, there are multiple claimants to ownership of the TT bike on which LeMond won the '89 Tour.

Picchio Special

According to Eddy himself in a (now famous and oft quoted) communication with the collector Brett Horton, he rode Peugeots during at least parts of two seasons. And he was only with Peugeot for two years. In Eddy's first pro season, he rode for Superia (and apparently rode Superias).

embankmentlb

I believe Lemond also road Calfee carbon bikes part of his carrier. In the pre carbon monocoque frame days most of the star riders had all their bikes custom made by people they trusted. Not by the sponsoring bike brand. in 1989 Lemond's bike was clearly a step up from the teams standard steel frames.

Picchio Special

I seem to recall that Craig Calfee made the LeMond carbon frames of the early 90's.

bbattle

And of course the 7-11 team was not riding anything built by Huffy. Lance had a rebadged Litespeed. He had a lot of input on the Madones but didn't like the first "aero" one and kept riding his climbing Madone. Tom Boonen had carbon frames made using custom molds just for him; back when he was winning stuff.

Henri Desgranges didn't like the power of the bicycle makers and for a few years tried outfitting the racers with identical bikes like the Little 500.

Picchio Special

Freddy Maertens very strongly disliked the bikes he got from Flandria, so he had his own De Rosa frames built and sneaked them into the factory at night to have them painted in the team livery. On one occasion, he was caught and the furious Flandria boss who found him out destroyed his De Rosas.

Lenton58 

I love this! Now that is real velo-drama!

joe englert

i wonder if anyone out there has that cover of "lemonds complete book of cycling" not the first edition!! that shows him riding a gitane. hopefully a person better at these things could put that picture up so we can see who made that. i do believe that is a bottecchia-not someone elses(but,,,what do i know)

longbeachgary

I have the second paperback edition - that the one you mean?

longbeachgary

joe englert

thats the one. interesting though, my copy has the same pic except that the bottecchia on the down tube is covered up. copyright thing? wierd anyway that sure looks like a carnielli bottecchia to me. notice the seat stays and the lug work. not carbon fibre for sure. thanks for posting that very much

longbeachgary

Your welcome. I bought my book in 1990.

Bianchigirll 

we had a Cat 2 rider try this when we were sponsored by Cdale. unfortunately his steel frame looked nothing like a 2.8 frame

Barchettaman

The practice of rebranding frames is ongoing - Cervelo's perceived superiority, particularly in the time trial, has seen them rebadged and repainted as Bianchi:



This 'Bianchi' started life as a Cervelo P2 Carbon.

Going back a few years to TdF 1999, this is Armstrong on a Litespeed Blade, rebadged as a Trek:

embankmentlb

Check out the video of the 1989 world championships Lemond gets a carbon bike (calfee?) from his handlers that seemed to be new from the box. The stars had the power to choose any bike they wanted for any situation. The photo of Lemond on the Bottecchia is probably pre- tour de france 1989. A bike is a bike is a bike when it comes to training. For the tour Lemond would ride whatever he thought gave him an advantage.

bikingshearer 

Big-name pros using frames made by someone other than the name on the downtube is a long and proud tradition. Merckx was only one example, albeit a major one.

Yes, he rode actual PX-10s, at least for a bit when he rode for Peugoet after Superia and before Faema. When he attacked Roger Pingeon (a Peugoet team leader and winner of the 1967 TdF) on a descent, Eddy said the reason for doing so there was that he knew from experience what crappy descenders Pugs were. (Don't flame me, I'm only the messenger.)

His "Eddy Merckx" badged machines were from a number of sources, but especuilly from Colnago until the 1972 Hour Record bike imbroglio, and from De Rosa thereafter.

And yes, Lemond used Della Santas for much of his pro career - many, although not all, of his "Gitane" badged machines came from Roland.

On the other hand, it appears that Fausto Coppi really did ride Bianchis. Serious Reparto Corse Bianchis, naturally. Of course, if you think the average shmoe could go buy a Bianchi like one of Coppi's . . . .

GrayJay

I think that the Lemond book cover photo was later staged as a photo shoot (I doubt he would have done a yello jersey photo shoot prior to the race). The giveaway? Lemond hated racing with a helmet like on the book cover. Every other (non-TT) photo of him racing TDF and worlds in 1989 shows him wearing no helmet. I remember that Lemond was one of the aggitators that once staged a rider protest at the start of a UCI race when they started forcing pros to wear helmets during competition. For publication of the book, it was probably deemed more PC to encourage his followers to wear helmets. A much more convincing photo of Lemond riding a steel bike during '89 TDF is at;
https://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010...on-greg-lemond

He probably rode the steel bike for reliability on the early flat stages and then switched to his carbon climbing bike (A rebadged TVT) for a slight mental boost once they hit the hills.

The '89 world championship ride was also on a TVT, his deal with calfee didnt start until 1991.

Kommisar89

There's also a picture out there on the web somewhere of Gianni Motta riding a blue Bottecchia badged bike for team Bottecchia-Molteni (probably built by the Colnago shop) but it's being used as an advertisement for the Gianni Motta Personal and "Bottecchia" is blacked out from his shorts so that all you can see is "Molteni". The head tube of the bike still clearly has the Bottecchia head badge on it though. I'm pretty sure they do it based on a variety of things including copyrights or just whatever business deal they worked out with the company. Could be that LeMond had a deal with Carnielli circa 1990 and did not have that same deal when the time came to print the next edition of the book. By then people were used to seeing that picture on the cover and they didn't want to change it and risk hurting sales. Just a guess.

Picchio Special

And Masi before Colnago. Still Colnago for at least some of '73 (even after the hour record "Windsor" issue). And Kessels from the Colnago period on - fairly frequently. Eddy used several dozen frames a year, swapped frames and forks, even between builders, and sometimes used bike during parts of different seasons.

stronglight

We should remember that it was typically only the very top level racers like Eddy Merckx who really had any input regarding what they would ride for any sponsored team. And, the domestiques or the less prominent riders were not nearly so well paid and could never afford to have someone like Ugo De Rosa build them a custom racing bike - which might easily be mangled during the racing season. Many racers seen in rare old filmed interviews were continually whining about what garbage factory bikes they were often forced to ride, just to get their all too modest paychecks.

Nevertheless, it was not unheard of during the vintage steel era for true professional quality bikes to also be made available to consumers - not just the look-alike team painted production model bikes. For example, during the late 1970s and early 1980s the Peugeot "Prestige" factory - from which the actual Team racing bikes were produced - would also provide the public with custom PY-10CP bikes (just like those built for Thevenet's 1977 TDF win). These could be ordered by consumers in the US only through local Peugeot authorized bike shops. They really were made-to-measure custom equipped racing bikes... and very expensive, too.