Re: [CR] "Ciclisimo" at L'EROICA

> All of this brings to mind a photo in Brett Horton's
> "Cycling's Golden Age"
> (p. 186) of Lucien Aimar and Barry Hoban in the 1965
> Paris-Tours Classic
> with the caption reading "... the lack of derailleurs was an
> attempt (for
> one year only) to re-create the racing conditions of the
> 1930s."
>
> Was this the first and only such pro retro race? And
> perchance is there a
> need for looking back in pro cycling which seems increasingly
> more about
> urine test results and how many watts one produces that the
> sort of gritty
> cycling "L'Eroica" celebrates and which it seems pro cyclists
> have at least
> some affinity for. I suspect the affinity would last about
> one stage but if there is a time to get back to basics,
> this might indeed be it.

Peter, I know your Italian is good, but how's your Spanish? http://personal3.iddeo.es/ferpuig/hist.htm#PTours I do well in Italian with everything that's the same as Spanish, so perhaps the reverse will work for you? Anyway, the last sentence of the Paris-Tours article says it all: "The isolated experience of prohibiting changers has not been repeated since then." Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia (USA)

That was written in 1993, but I think it still holds true today. The only exception I can think of took place at the Giro d'Italia a couple of years ago. One of the Anglophone racers with a track racing background (I can't remember exactly whom), rode the Prologue on a fixed gear pursuit bike. Of course it had a disk wheel and time trial handlebars, but it was still considered radically retro by virtue of the single, fixed spreocket at the rear.

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