[CR]Re: Fiat Racing Team and Merckx Question(s)?

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Thread-Topic: Re: Fiat Racing Team and Merckx Question(s)?
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From: "Silver, Mordecai" <MSilver@iso.com>
To: <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: [CR]Re: Fiat Racing Team and Merckx Question(s)?
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 15:16:42 -0500

In the first edition of Eugene Sloane's book, there is a great picture of Gimondi giving Merckx a drink from his water bottle during the '69 Giro d'Italia. Gimondi is riding a Chiorda, and Merckx's bike is badged Eddy Merckx: his legend and fame entitled him to this even before he had ever raced in the Tour de France. (Gimondi won that Giro, after Merckx had been disqualified for using a banned substance.)

Merckx's teams: 1965 Solo-Superia 1966-1967 Peugeot 1968-1969 Faema 1970 Faemino 1971-1976 Molteni 1977 Fiat 1978 C&A

An interesting bit of trivia: in 1969, Molteni was an almost entirely Italian team, including Marino Basso; when Merckx signed with Molteni in 1971, the composition of the team became overwhelmingly Belgian. Likewise with Fiat: in 1976 the team was made up of Italian riders, but when Merckx signed with them for the 1977 season, a good number of former Molteni riders joined him, in addition to Patrick Sercu, his long-time friend and teammate in six-day races. Thus Fiat became a predominantly Belgian team for 1977. In 1978, Fiat sponsored a team of French riders; one of the few non-French on the team was Paul Sherwen. Teams then were much more national than today, while there was nothing strange about Italian companies sponsoring a Belgian squad.

Mordecai Silver
New York, NY