[CR]What's Eddy riding?

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Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:45:01 -0800 (PST)
From: "Thomas Adams" <thomasthomasa@yahoo.com>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: [CR]What's Eddy riding?

Thanks to those who recommended the January '05 issue of Cycle Sport America. Truly an excellent read with it's retrospective on Eddy Merckx's career.

I do have a question about one of the pictures. On page 72 is a picture taken during the '68 Tour of Flanders. Eddy is leading Godefroot and Sels as they charge across a section of pave', Godefroot won the race, one of the few times anyone pipped Merckx when Eddy was up front at the end.

The curious part is that Eddy is riding an all white bike with no maker's name. By '68, he had left Peugeot and joined Faema, and anyway he's wearing a World Champion jersey with what appears to be Faema embroidery, but the bike isn't the familiar Faema red and white. To make it even odder, the bike has centerpull brakes instead of the usual Faema Campy sidepulls. The only grapics on the frame are two rainbow/ world champion's bands on the DT, which look very Peugeot. On the other hand the headlugs aren't black and the componentry doesn't match a Peugeot, as the brake levers look like Universals, the calipers have nutted brake shoes, not the Mafac rods, so presumably the calipers are Universal too, and the front hub looks to have a Campy oil clip.

I can't get into the Archives this morn, but I believe '68 is before Merckx was riding Colnago's or DeRosas. Might this be a Masi then? But why the white paint? Was there a neutral support service in this race that handed out neutral white bikes? Or could the picture have been retouched to remove the Faema colors and Merckx name? But then why the centerpull brakes? A later picture from the '68 Giro shows Eddy on a classic colored Faema machine with sidepulls. Was the team experimenting with different bikes early in the season? If this was Paris Roubaix, I might speculate using centerpulls for greater mud clearance, but the brake shoes are pretty high in the slots. Anyone got any information or ideas?

Tom (Curious about Trivia) Adams, Shrewsbury NJ

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