[CR]The adventure of authenticating a World Championship bike

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Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:48:17 -0700
To: gholl@optonline.net, CR List <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
From: "Jan Heine" <heine94@earthlink.net>
Subject: [CR]The adventure of authenticating a World Championship bike

Last year, after Paris-Brest-Paris, I remained in France for a while to do research for Bicycle Quarterly and future book projects.

One of the people I wanted to visit was Genevieve Gambillon. Her palmares include 2 world championships on the road (1972 and 1974), numerous French championships on road and track, etc. She rode for Rene Herse, and I knew she had some of her bikes left. Mike Kone of Rene Herse Bicycles had asked me to help with historic bikes for the North American Handmade Show, so this was of added interest.

Unfortunately, Mme. Gambillon is busy. With four children and a job as a nurse, she has her hands full, and little time for some American who wants to know about what she did in 1972. Still, persistence paid off, and finally, she agreed to meet me at the train station in her home town while her son was at the dentist - the next morning! I was in Lyon, working on a different story, but fortunately, French trains are fast.

That night, I was back in Paris on the high-speed TGV train (having smuggled a bike and a tandem frame for a friend) onto the train while nobody was looking!). The next morning, I left at 5 to take the slower train to Normandy. The train dead-ended at the edge of the ocean, and I got off. I saw several middle-aged ladies. Which one was Genevieve Gambillon? None looked like her in the old photos when she was 23, but that does not mean much. One of them was looking around, so I walked up to her. However, just as I was about to ask whether she was Mme. Gambillon, she turned and greeted another passenger.

The station emptied quickly, and there I was, almost alone. Two police officers arrived and searched the luggage of a young man who obviously looked suspicious. The scene reminded me of a Hitchcock movie. Perhaps "North by Northwest," where the hero was waiting on the highway for his rendez-vous with somebody he did not know. However, a cropduster plane would have been seriously out of place in this medieval town, and instead, Genevieve Gambillon pulled up. She even had brought her two remaining bikes to show me!

We spent an enjoyable hour talking about the old times. And she agreed to let me take one bike to the U.S. for the Handmade show. After she left, I was getting very, very hungry. With all the travel from Lyon to Paris to Normandy, I had not really eaten in a while. The train for Paris left in 15 minutes, so I locked up the bike at the bike rack, and jogged into town. It being August, most bakeries were closed. The only open bakery has a long line. I hated to do this, as an American, but I asked whether I could skip the line and buy my croissants, and still catch my train. Everybody saw how out of breath I was, and like most French, they were nice and helpful.

Ten minutes later, I was on the train, with the Rene Herse World Championship bike hanging from the bike hook next to a city bike...

Now came the fun part:

Genevieve Gambillon remembered having three Herse bikes. She showed me two of them - the red one which she used to win the Worlds in 1972 and 1974, the blue one which was her backup bike. Both were made in 1970. The third bike (gold and red in historic photos) was made earlier, and it was retired when she got the two new ones.

Well, a quick look at the serial numbers showed that the red World's bike indeed was made in 1970 (and later was found to correspond with the order books at Herse), and photos of the time show exactly the same bike, color, parts, etc. That bike was on display at the North American Handmade Show in Portland, and I have no doubt it is the World's bike.

However, the blue backup bike's serial number shows that it was made in 1968, not 1970, as G. Gambillon believed. The order books do show a second 1970 bike for Gambillon, so her recollection of two bikes in 1970 is accurate, but the second bike is not the one she thinks it is. (The order books for 1968 [and most other years] are not preserved.)

In this case, I believe the back-up bike is her first bike, and the second 1970 bike is lost somewhere, or perhaps was destroyed in a crash that G. Gambillon purged from her memory. This means that the back-up bike (1968) was repainted at some point by Herse, from red/gold to blue. And that G. Gambillon probably rode her old bike as a back-up.

Lyli Herse, daughter of the maker and the coach of G. Gambillon, was unable to help with this research. Lyli does not remember how many bikes G. Gambillon had, just that her main racing bike was red (which matches the historic photos). Fortunately, the serial numbers include the year of manufacture, and even more fortunately, of the few years for which we have records, 1970 is one.

Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.bikequarterly.com