There was a time when the team Bianchi bikes where infact the blue shade, rather than the preferred green 'celeste'....if memory is working I recall Knut Knudson, and Fons De Wolf [one of the best names in the peleton] rode the blue Bianchi bikes late 70s early 80s?
I remember the confusion it caused with people getting their frames painted when asking for Bianchi blue and expecting the green, but getting the blue instead!
However, still a nice colour.....and much better than the weird combination of celeste and yellow as in the Pantani period.......
Cheers Kevin Sayles
Bridgwater Somerset UK
Bianchi Blue would be celeste. Celeste would literally be a sky blue color but it became a bit green as time went on. The band on early Bianchi team jerseys is most emphatically blue.
Hugh Thornton
Cheshire, England
From: Ken Wehrenberg <wnwires@htc.net> Subject: Re: [CR] 60's Bianchi paint colours To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org, gwlone@yahoo.ca Date: Sunday, 20 September, 2009, 9:13 PM
Greg Lone asked about... "a 1961 Competizione project bike needing a repaint. It was originally transparent blue over a silver base over the chrome.?A previous owner stripped off 99 % of the origional paint.?I am wondering about the correctness of redoing it in celeste, not the moral issue of changing the color but rather if the factory ever built celeste 1961 Competizion's. Does anyone know if the blue, green, black etc colors were just for north America with celeste continueing to be used on the rest of the world??"
Greg, the guy whose shop I learned a lot in back in CO in the early '70s had, from his competition days in upstate NY, a Bianchi in what he always referred to as "Bianchi Blue". It sounds exactly like what you are referring to. I think he thought it was THE Bianchi color back in the year he bought his, so whether it was something like Thevenet's Peugeot color-- a brief tryst with silver after all those classic years of white-- or Celeste in the case of Bianchi, I guess that's your call.
Ken Wehrenberg, Hermann, MO