by Robert Penn
Yes, tens of thousands commute to work by bicycle every day, but also every weekend, 1,200 people ride in cyclo-cross races; there’s a gang who make and ride mutant bikes; there’s bike polo and bike jousting; every week a bunch of guys go ‘zoo-bombing’ — that’s racing kids’ bikes down the hill from Washington Park. We’re saturated with cycling sub-cultures. Oh, and we have the largest naked bike ride in America. They say there’s a bike event in Portland every twenty-seven minutes. As a politician, you can’t get elected without a bike platform. There are at least twenty-five custom frame-builders in business, making Portland the centre of the renaissance in hand-built bicycles. And it’s aspirational. A lot of American cities are looking at Portland’s cycling scene and wondering: how can we achieve that?
I visited the workshop of Sacha White, a renowned Portland frame-builder. He talked about the re-establishment of small communities within Portland, based around the bicycle:
Fifty per cent of the kids at my children’s school cycle there each day. If you live and work and shop locally, then you have a strong community. The big house in the suburbs with a fence around it, then driving ten miles to school and twenty miles to work every day — this destroys communities. I think there’s a whole generation re-evaluating that notion of the American dream. Cycling is becoming socially acceptable again. We’re trying to assist that by building good bicycles for transportation, bicycles that are truly useful and not just toys.
He was a softly spoken man with a strong vision of what he was doing, and why. He was making bicycles for a brave new world. Needless to say, all his bicycles were fitted with Chris King headsets.
After lunch, Chris DiStefano led me back downstairs to the component assembly area. Sitting on the corner of a workbench was my headset. He clasped my shoulder with one hand and between the forefinger and thumb of the other, he held up the headset above us, to the light: 1⅛ “NoThreadSet” with sotto voce logo in silver. I guarantee it’ll go with whatever colour you paint the bike,’ he said. ‘It comes with a ten-year warranty — that’s how good we think our bearings are. It’s a dream headset, for a dream bike.’
The name Cino Cinelli (pronounced ‘Chino Chinelli’) resonates through the history of modern racing bicycles. Today, you need a degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in polymeric composite systems to work on R&D in the bicycle industry. Cino Cinelli quit school at 14, in 1930, and acquired an education on the road, racing bicycles. In a professional career that lasted over a decade, he won the Giro di Lombardia, Giro di Piemonte and Giro di Campania. His crowning achievement in the saddle was victory in the gruelling 185 mile, one-day classic race, Milan—San Remo, in 1943.
Convinced that the bicycle was ripe for innovation, Cinelli moved to Milan and set up in business with his brother in 1948. One arm of the company marketed the high-end components of other manufacturers, making Cino a sort of godfather of the industry in Italy: such was the quality of their inventory that simply being included became a mark of distinction. The other arm, developing and selling Cinelli’s own innovative products, brought an eminence to the brand that remains today.
With little regard for fashion, Cinelli invested his unconventional ideas in bespoke frame production, making everything from Olympic medal-winning track frames to the ‘Supercorsa’ road model — an enduring icon of the late twentieth century and the E-type Jaguar of bike frames. In partnership with Unicanitor, Cinelli designed the first plastic-bodied saddle. He invented the first integral sloping fork crown in the 1950s and the M—71, the first clipless pedal, in the 1970s; he founded the Italian Association of Professional Cyclists and wrote a canonical text on training. Cino Cinelli and the company he fronted for three decades are, however, most famous for handlebars and stems.
Unlike the frame of the bicycle, the geometry of which varies only a little according to its intended use, handle-bars come in wildly different and multifarious shapes according to the type of bicycle they are attached to. Mountain bikes have flat or ‘riser’ bars which, as the name suggests, rise from the centre to the tips. BMX handlebars are U-shaped and reinforced. Most hybrid or utility bikes have either a straight bar or a handlebar that curves back towards the rider, ending with grips parallel to the bike. Similarly, some touring bikes have these swept-back handlebars, known as ‘North Road’ bars. The handlebars on track bikes are characterized by ramps that sweep down from the centre, straight into the drops or ‘D’s: they’re designed for use without brake levers and provide more arm clearance for sprinting out of the saddle. This type of bar has surged in popularity recently on urban fixed-wheel or single-speed bikes. Triathlon bikes have ‘aero bars’, which bring the riders’ arms together and thrust them forward over the front wheel, reducing the steering capability but increasing aerodynamic efficiency.
The most recognized type of handlebar, though, the bar most of us would draw on a doodle of a bicycle, is the conventional drop bar, which you find on all road racing bikes. The significant advantages of this type of bar lie in the way it promotes even distribution of weight across the bike, and in the variety of places you can comfortably put your hands. If you’ve ever ridden 100 miles in a day, you’ll know how prized this variety is. You can sit up with your hands on the flat ‘tops’ and admire the view; you can rest your hands on the ‘ramps’ and slipstream the rider in front; hook your hands around the ends and wrench up the steepest inclines out of the saddle; or shove your fists into the Ds and sprint for the line or hare down a mountainside.
When Cino joined his brother Giotto’s business in 1948, handlebars were made of steel and fashioned on jigs, by hand. Road racing handlebars were generally a standard shape. From the centre, the bar went straight out then bent forward in a gradual curve; when the bars were parallel with the frame, they turned downwards, bending in a smooth-radius curve through approximately 160°, and straightened at the end. It’s a classic and elegant shape.
In the 1950s, Cinelli began to offer subtle differences in the drop, curve-radius, ramp-length and the degree of bend. Models were named after great races, famous climbs and the legends of the age. In the 1950s, Cinelli marketed bar models called ‘San Remo’, ‘Gran Fondo’ and ‘Giro d’Italia’. In the 1960s, another Italian component manufacturer called TTT, set up by a former engineer at the Ambrosio factory, manufactured ‘Bobet’, ‘Anquetil’, ‘DeFilippis’ and ‘Coppi’ bars. Drops varied from 145 mm to 210 mm; the length of the ramps, a vertical measurement from the top of the bar to the apex of the bend, ranged from 90 mm to 125 mm.
Giuseppe and Giovani Ambrosio, from Turin, pioneered the use of aluminium in bicycles. They were the first, and for a while only, Italian firm making aluminium bars and stems. More flexible than steel, aluminium was thought to dampen the vibrations from the road. The first aluminium bike was made as early as 1935, but the perception, especially among professional racers, was that this metal wasn’t strong enough for handlebars. Today, a similar perception of carbon composites lingers in the peloton: even though the use of carbon fibre in bicycle components has exploded in recent years, some pro riders still insist on having an aluminium bar on their race bike.
Catastrophic handlebar failure, caused by anything from metal fatigue in aluminium to an unnoticed crack in carbon fibre, is something that keeps racers awake at night. If you’re going slowly when a handlebar shears without warning, you impale yourself on the stem; if you’re tanking down a mountainside in the Alps at 50 mph, you die. Imagine being thrown from a car at the equivalent speed and you get the idea.
When Cinelli switched to manufacturing aluminium handle-bars in 1963, opinion among the racing elite changed. Steel handlebars quickly became obsolete, while Cinelli bars became ubiquitous. The model 1A handlebar stem was introduced in 1964: it became the industry standard. Not only was it inventive in design and strong, it looked fabulous too. For a decade, you rarely saw a professional road cyclist wrap his sinewy fingers round anything else. The company sold 7,500 bars and stems annually in the mid-1960s. By the time
Cino retired in 1978, it was 150,000 a year. Despite the growth in production, the standards remained high; the bar and stems were about as coveted as any bicycle components then made. The list of exalted champions — LeMond, Fignon, Hinault, Chiapucci, Cipollini and Armstrong — who have chosen Cinelli bars continues into the present day.
Antonio Colombo, scion of the famous Columbus tubing dynasty, bought Cinelli in 1978. He has continued to drive both companies through design and innovation. Just looking at the contemporary Cinelli catalogue on the company website, I sensed Antonio was eccentric. The impression was confirmed when I walked into his factory on the outskirts of Milan. He came gliding down the aisle towards me on a scooter, wearing a Paul Smith suit and hiking shoes.
‘Yes, yes, the scooter,’ he said after we’d exchanged our ‘ciaos’, ‘the scooter is the best. It has CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machined components. But it costs more than a bicycle. Of course, nobody bought it. Except me . . . hah! Shall we have a tour?’
Antonio’s father, Angelo Luigi, established Columbus in 1919 with these words: ‘I want to do business in iron and steel and make a fair and honest profit.’ Along with Reynolds, Columbus dominated the high-end steel bicycle frame market for most of the twentieth century. At times, they diversified into motorcycles, ski sticks, car chassis and even tubular steel furniture, but the racing bicycle was always at the heart of the business. Perhaps the most significant Columbus innovation was Nivachrome steel tubing. It was the first alloy developed specifically for building bicycle frames. Because it loses so little of its strength when welded, the tubes were thinner and lighter than anything that had gone before. The bicycle I rode around the world was made from Nivachrome steel. I told Antonio this when we halted beside a row of machines where steel tubes were being drawn. He flashed me a wild look.
I tell you straight, one of the problems for me as a worker, and I started working in my father’s factory when I was 22, was noise — steel tubes being drawn, steel tubes being cut and moved and banged together . . . when we made two million tubes a year, when there were 150 frame-builders in Italy, noise, noise, noise, all day. And then five years ago, my problem was silence. Everybody wanted carbon. Today, steel is coming back a little, slowly, particularly in the US. I’m happy to say, even some Italian frame-builders start to make again in steel. A steel frame, it lasts for life. OK, carbon is there for competition, but if you want a frame every day for your life, steel . . . we used to make 20,000 tubes at a time. Now we make 20. But we do make again, and look, our workers are happy.
Antonio shouted across a workbench to Emilvano who was bending a cromoly seat stay by hand in a jig. He raised a gloved hand.
‘You cannot build a good bicycle with unhappy workers.’
Angelo Luigi Colombo is famous for pioneering steel fork blades with an elliptical (rather than oval) section: these ‘Italian section’ forks improved the handling characteristics of the bicycle, while making the ride more comfortable. They were enormously popular. Today, Columbus have capitalized on over half a century of experience in fork innovation to produce a range of superb carbon forks — one of the items on my shopping list in Milan.
Antonio led me across the factory to an area where steel tubes, a handlebar and some carbon forks were being tested. Fatigue, shock, static, frontal and side strength — every type of test seemed to be going on, creating an unearthly cacophony: tchik-a-tchik-a-tchik-a . . . dug-dug-dug . . . dink-puhh-dink-puhh. I knew the forks were made in Taiwan. I’d have to make do with watching them being tested for fatigue.
On Brian Rourke’s recommendation, I was after a Columbus ‘Carve’ model. This fork is made with monocoque technology — a construction technique that uses the external skin of a structure, rather than an internal frame, to support loads. Its use in the production of carbon fibre bicycle frames was pioneered in the 1980s and is now widespread. The steering column tube, which is inserted through the head tube, and the fork blades are one piece, made from overlaid layers of carbon. The Carve model has a traditional shape (‘Aw, it looks magic,’ Brian had said), aluminium forged drop-outs and a rake of 45 mm.
How a bike steers and handles is largely determined by something called ‘trail’. If you draw an imaginary line — known as the ‘steering axis’ — down through the centre of a bicycle head tube, it meets the ground in front of the point where the wheel makes contact with the ground: the horizontal distance between these two points is called the trail (so named because the wheel ‘trails’ behind the steering axis). A large or long trail makes a bike stable, but relatively slow to turn. A short trail decreases inherent stability but increases agility. The same principles apply to motorbikes. Bicycles made specifically for racing in ‘criteriums’ — road races around city centres — have a short trail, to aid manoeuvrability. Comfort is not a factor.
Fork rake, sometimes known as ‘offset’, is the perpendicular distance between the steering axis and the centre of the wheel — so it’s a measurement of the forward bend in a fork blade. Along with the angle of the head tube and the radius of the wheel, it is a variable that determines trail. With a given head tube angle and wheel radius, more fork rake gives less trail and vice versa. Fork rake also affects comfort: touring bikes commonly have a longer fork rake as, combined with a longer wheelbase — the distance between the wheel hubs — it dampens road shock.
Fork rake and the angle of the head tube serve one other design function on a bicycle — to ensure the front wheel clears the feet at the front of the pedal swing. In the early days of the safety bicycle there was very little angling of the head tube and forks. And though history sadly doesn’t credit the man who first thought of tilting a bicycle’s steering axis, it is more likely to be because of feet striking the wheel than an understanding of stability.
Like hemlines, fork rake has gone up and down in the last century. From the 1930s to the 1950s, bicycles typically had as much as 90 mm of fork rake (and often zero trail): largely because roads were so poor, cyclists demanded bikes with plenty of fork rake and a long wheelbase to absorb the shocks. As roads improved, bikes were built with shorter wheelbases and tyres became narrower, making it necessary to increase trail to ensure the bikes handled safely. Today forks have less rake — 45 mm is average — and generally, the bicycles handle better.
Antonio has rigorously kept innovation within Columbus and Cinelli alive. The bicycle is an ‘infinite project’, he has written. In fact, he personifies the spirit of ingenuity that, in the middle of the twentieth century, placed Italy instead of Britain at the forefront of the bicycle industry. Cinelli, Campagnolo, Bianchi, Pinarello, De Rosa, Columbus, Selle Italia, TTT, Ambrosio, Colnago, Magistroni, Wilier Triestina — these are the marques that, driven by people’s passion for the machine as well as by the commercial boom after World War II, helped the bicycle evolve from a utilitarian machine into an aesthetic object of desire.
The cycle industry in Italy focused obsessively on sport and speed. During the late 1940s, the nation was enthralled by the great rivalry between two Italian giants of cycle racing, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi. In 1948, road cycling even spilled over into politics; when the shooting of a prominent Communist politician threatened to cause civil unrest, the Italian Prime Minister rang Bartali during the Tour de France and begged him to win. It was thought a Bartali victory might divert the minds of his countrymen from revolution. He duly won and the threat of unrest passed.
In the 1950s, cycling in Britain was still pervaded by pragmatism and pastoralism. The road racing scene was hugely undeveloped, compared with that on the Continent, which helps explain why so few British cyclists have made a good showing in the Tour de France. The bicycle was for getting to work during the week, and for going youth hostelling with a flask of dandelion and burdock at the weekend. The sport of bicycle racing was still strangled by the conventions of Victorian rule-makers. It largely consisted of ‘time trials’, codified in the 1890s by Frederick Thomas Bidlake, a man with a passion for time-keepi
ng: competitors set off at intervals and ride alone, against the clock, up and down a wind-slapped A-road. It’s duller than lawn bowling. In Europe, massed-start rides were much more popular. Races entailed breakaways and sprint finishes, chases and crashes, suffering and solidarity, tactics and alliances, co-operation and competition, vanity and honour. Massed-start road racing is underpinned by the unwritten etiquette of the peloton, something so complex that not even a Victorian Englishman could codify it into a booklet of rules. As the French say of cycle racing: Courir c’est mourir unpeu (‘To race is to die a little’).
Bidlake, a racing cyclist himself and later an administrator at the heart of British cycling, described the Continental style of massed-start racing as a ‘superfluous excrescence’. He protested too much, perhaps. The truth is that cycling in Britain never had the backing of the establishment. Time-trialling was a way to use the roads for sport without attracting too much attention.
The glittering, lightweight and innovative componentry, the stylish attire and the cyclists with film-star good looks who came out of Italy were like rays of dazzling light in post-war Britain. Even the colours the Italians painted their bicycles — pearlescent white, yellow, pink, the ‘heavenly blue’ of Bianchi, said to be the colour of the queen of Italy’s eyes — filled the minds of English yeomen with wonder.
The British thought they owned the bicycle. From the day that James Starley patented his Ariel bicycle in 1870 to the mid-1950s, they effectively did (UK output was 3.5 million bicycles in 1955). But you can’t own the most popular form of transport in history for ever and the rapid rise in car ownership in the late 1950s meant British cultural perceptions of the bicycle were changing. It was no longer principally a form of transportation. There was now room for new meanings: it could be a toy, as it largely was in America, or an object of desire as it was among the racing-mad Continentals.
