[CR]Mystery bike, Frank Hoste; mystery solved?

(Example: Books)

Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 18:08:18 +0200
From: "Freek Faro" <khun.freek@gmail.com>
To: classicrendezvous <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: [CR]Mystery bike, Frank Hoste; mystery solved?

Aldo, Ray, Bert and others,

That mystery bike got me searching through the few copies of the Belgian weekly Sport 80, that I somehow have kept in my possession. So I can now say that I may have solved this mystery, of the bike (and shirt) with blacked-out names. That name is Carlos. A (to me) rather obscure Belgian bike brand of that time. In 1980 Joseph Bruyere won Het Volk while riding for the Marc-Carlos-VRD team. Carlos saw fit to advertise with that win. Funny enough, a member of that team was Cuvie Carlos, probably the owners son! I found a pic of Joseph Bruyere in the Paris-Nice of that year. Compare his shirt to that of Hoste in Aldo's mystery pic, and you'll see what I'm getting at. Tha Carlos name is blacked out. Later that year the Marc-IWC-VRD team took part in the Tour de France. The picture I found (of Lucien van Impe) shows he's riding a Merkcx bike (if you can peer through the mud on bike and rider!). So my explanation would be that the team was essentially underfunded at the start of the season, found a co-sponsor later that enabled them to take part in the TdF (IWC) and then they could afford the Merckx bikes.

I've put the pics in my wooljersey album: http://wooljersey.com/gallery/Freeks-racefietsen/Belgian+bikes/

Can anyone tell anything about the Carlos bikes? And while we're at it, I still don't know who built the Boston bikes that Lucien was riding when in the Boston-Mavic team, the next season!

Freek (I'm not Belgian, I'm Dutch!) Faro Rotterdam Netherlands