Followers of Merckx & Kessels:
Martin Appel referred to Merckx presenting a Kessels bike to a club.
On that topic, the Australian magazine "RIDE" has a picture of a Kessels bike held to have been raced by Merckx, in a retrospective on page 112 of issue 26 Spring 2004. (I got this magazine just last month, as Palo Alto bike shop was giving them away due to their being out of date.)
The text says that the bike is circa 1974, and notes that at that time De Rosa was known to be the builder for the Molteni team. And although there is no reference to it, the bike in the photo has a chrome Kessels sticker (just like the one in Martin's photo) on the seat tube just below the seat cluster.
The bike has a flat chrome crown, and the fork tips and the entire rear dropouts are chromed. The seatstay caps are similar to the shape of those on a De Rosa, except that they are distinguishable by being wider and rounder towards the bottom -- halfway between a football shape and a tear-drop shape. The bike also has the Eddy-style drilled front chainring and drilled rear derailleur.
I have another picture of a Merckx bike with a Kessels sticker. This one is on the back cover of a magazine called "Eddy Merckx A de a Z", Mirroir Cyclisme, No 240, Oct Nov 1977. The whole magazine is about Eddy of course, and the picture on the back cover is an Adidas ad showing a side-view of Eddy riding in Fiat colors. His silver bike has a Kessels sticker just ahead of the downtube shift levers. This bike has seat-stay caps with the same shape as those pictured in RIDE.
The Kessels sticker has the Belgian colors across the bottom and the world champ stripes up the side. It is possible that the presence of these two sets of stripes derives from an association with Eddy. If anybody on the list is familiar with Kessels, I would be interested to hear the story behind the label.
Brad Stockwell Palo Alto
Martin Appel <martin@camelot.de> wrote:
The same guy said he got an ancient bike labeled "Merckx" that had a strange thing to it: it beared a writing "„J. Kessels, Constructeur“... :-)
It seems at some time in the 70ies a belgian club called "RSV St. Vith" from Belgium held a criterium, to which several pros attended; Merckx, Thurau, Maertens.... That bike is said to have been given to that club by Eddy as a present. The current owner got it from a member of that club.
Naturally, i asked for pics, well here they are:
(you must be very brave now)
http://forum.tour-magazin.de/
what do you say? :-)
Martin Appel Munich, Germany
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