Peter wrote:
One thought I had, after comparing this bike to all the Eddy In Action photos I could find, was that he usually seemed to be road riding on chromed forks, and these ones are painted. Although there is one shot of him on the track in Mexico in 1982(?) where the forks are painted. But that bike is a completely different beast than the one in the picture.
The picture of Eddy Merckx on page 164 of Eugene Sloane's Complete Book of Bicycling (1970) shows Merckx riding in the 1969 Tour of Italy on a bike with painted forks. The photo is just b&w, but the bike looks lovely, white with contrasting head tube. The water bottle is positioned low on the down tube, held by clamps just below the EDDY MERCKX decal. It also looks like he was using quill pedals that day rather than track pedals. The brake cables look similar to those in the quizzler photo; maybe a tad shorter, but not much. I'm curious about the shift levers in the Sloane picture. They seem to be fitted with rather chunky black rubber grips. Does anybody know what they are?
John Hurley
Austin, Texas, USA