Concerning Eddy's hour bike, David and Jan wrote:
>I know there has been some debate if the bars were actually drilled,
>but let me put forth that this picture shows the holes on the
>trailing edge, which would make them very hard to see in most photos.
>Indeed. That is the problem with the old photos.
To which I will add: unless the holes you're looking for are unusually large and numerous, like that row of great big 50-calibre manholes shown and purported to have been used for the record in Owen Mulholland's Bicycle Guide article -- and which were also shown in photos and Rebour's hand sketches in an article soon after the record. Magnificent and populous openings like that would be easy to spot if they had been there.
Instead there is contrary evidence. There is a very clear photo of the back of the handlebars of Merckx's bike, taken from the infield during the record (black headset and sloping stem installed) which shows beyond doubt that the trailing edge of the handlebars was not drilled. This photo was published in Bicycling! magazine, Jan '75, Page 38, and is also published in Bike World, Sep/Oct '79, Page 25.
There is additional contrary evidence in the video: La Course en Tete (available now on Ebay, item 6379362877), which shows video footage of the record. At the start, Eddy is in the infield, putting drops of liquid in his nose, then splashing the remainder on the front of his jersey. He gets up and walks to the track followed by a crowd including Molteni and Albani. In the crowd there's a short stocky guy lugging the bike -- I think it's Ernesto himself. As he's walking close to the camera with the bike over his shoulder, it can be clearly seen that there are no drilled holes on the trailing edges of the handlebars or seatpost. The crowd closes in behind him but as the bike is set down upon the track, through the sea of people one gets a glimpse of the black headset and the sloping stem -- verifying that we're looking at the right bike. Then, slow-motion footage of the start. The view is still from the infield, and since the ride proceeds counter-clockwise the bike is seen from the non-drive side -- but as Merckx begins to turn the cranks one can see sunlight sparkling through the slots that are cut through the chainring.
Eddy achieved the record on a bike that did not have the drilled holes shown in the seatpost and bars that were photographed in Mulholland's Bicycle Guide article and rendered in Rebour's drawings. The Bicycle Guide bike (the BG bike?) also has a chainring where the milled slots do not go all the way through, which does not match the actual ring. Nonetheless the BG bike appears to have the correct stem and headset.
Moving further afield, I mention that there is another bike that has been represented as Merckx's hour record bike, and which was displayed at the "100 years of Road Racing" exhibition during the Tour's anniversary (did anybody besides me save those photos?), and which was also featured in a "Night of Champions" dinner which was reported on during the same year. This second bike (the "100" bike?) clearly has the wrong stem and seatpost and has had some new stickers applied, but you know, I'm such a nut, I think that the frame is the genuine article because it has white areas on the headtube and seat tube which match the shape of the Windsor stickers that were visible during the record ride, and emphasized in frontal photos shown in Windsor ads shortly after the record.
Brad Stockwell Palo Alto
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