Aldo wrote:
Not a great scan, but interesting shot of Fiorenzo Magni at the 1948 Paris-Roubaix. The bike is a Wilier-Triestina, almost certainly copper plated with chrome fork and stay ends. I was expecting to see a Campagnolo cambio corsa shifter, but this looks to be a Simplex TdF. This and other pics from the same race reveal no front shifter on this bike. Note the small front mud guard, LONG steel stem, heavily-padded handlebars and brake levers, gonfleur on the downtube, and no water bottle in his single bar-mounted cage.
Magni went on to finish 5th, 37 seconds behind winner Rik van Steenbergen.
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Note how the bars and stem are just about level with each other. I love seeing this kind of thing in an authentic action-shot. These guys knew what worked...else they wouldn't have done it. For long fast rides on bad roads...that set-up worked best, looks like.
Not that he couldn't go faster with lower bars and a higher saddle. He probably could have. But he would have been in a lot of pain doing it, I expect.
Charles Andrews SoCal
"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are."
- Epictitus