CR FOLK:
Below is an excerpt from an article on De Rosa in the Oct '86 issue of Bicycle Guide, in which Ugo implies that Eddy was riding a De Rosa back when he was generally held to be on a Masi Special.
Side comment: of the dozen-or-so bikes I have, the one that feels best to me is my 84 DeRosa -- it's the one I would choose if I had to ride 100 miles every day (my 76 Zeus is still my most prized possession despite its relatively unappealing ride qualities).
Brad Stockwell (I've got lots of different reasons to like bikes) Palo Alto
IN THE SHOP (by Christopher Koch) --------------------------------- (Ugo was) shy, quiet, reluctant - a dour, stooped man hiding behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.
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"Look at these," he said, warming up to the task, "Three bikes, all the same size, all different angles."
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"Big, strong riders have upright seat angles," he said, pointing to one of the bikes. "But smaller, agile riders need to be stretched out," he added, pointing to another.
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Another wave of his hand had De Rosa's son going for a particularly well-used bike. (note: a Molteni bike with a 1/R stem is pictured in the article) "This was Merckx's personal racing bike," he said. I asked him if it was true that Merckx had a different bike for every type of race. In response, he disappeared and returned with a monstrous wood and steel contraption that looked like an overgrown carpenter's square. He grabbed the bike and hung the straightedge of the thing on the top tube, while the other edge dangled down near the bottom bracket. A ruler along the top edge measured the distance from the center like of the bottom bracket to the center of the seat lug. This, apparently, is the key measurement in a De Rosa racing frame.
"Look," he said. "This one measures 15 cm. It has an upright seat angle for climbing. But if I made a bike for Merckx for something flat, like Milan-San Remo, I would stretch this to 16.5 cm. For Paris-Roubaix, I'd make it 17cm, because the course is so arduous."
"I don't vary the head angle much," he said, "An upright angle doesn't descend well. For mountainous stages I made Merckx's bikes with slacker head angles and stretched fork rakes." According to De Rosa, he built these bikes for Merckx during the 1969 and 1970 seasons.
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"If you took the bikes that I made for other teams out of this year's Giro, you'd see quite a few riders on foot. In 1973, seven teams would have had to walk."
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De Rosa Professional Roadtest, Doug Roosa ----------------------------------------- Greg Honn once asked Ugo De Rosa how he knew when his bikes were right. "My bikes are never right," De Rosa replied. "Frame building is something you learn every single day. There will always be changes on a bike."