Just been getting ready for Christmas..got the drinks sorted and the chocolates..then I started out on the Crackers that our cycling guests and ourselves are going to pull as http://pull.as we knock back the port and the digestifs. Of course we all hope that a pair of Prior large flange hubs or a Nivex rear mech will fall from the Cracker's wrapping.
But what about those little piecs of paper bearing a joke..or a conundrum to tease us? Here's an example of the sort of thing that will attempt to stir the group of revellers' grey matter:- What have Jacques Anquetil and Henri Anglade in common?
I anticipate the following answers:- ! They were both Frenchmen; 2.they were both professional racing cyclists; 3. they were both racing at around the same time in the 50s and 60s;4. they were both French Road Racing Champions..Anquetil being the Amateur one in 1952 and Anglade being the Pro Champion in 59 and 65; 5 both rode the 1959 Tour de France, finished in the top-10 with Anglade placing second and Anquetil third; 6..there must been many other similarities.too numerous to mention..
One unlikely similarity is that although they rode for different teams and on different frames - Anquetil riding for Helyett, Gitane and his own brand, and Anglade riding for Liberia and Sauvage-Lejeune - they both used the same frame-builder, a certain Bernard Carre, based in Montreuil, just outside the peripherique road that cuts Paris of from its suburbs.
Some three years ago I chanced to buy one of Anglade's personal Sauvage-Lejeune frames and, knowing that he was still alive and well and living just north of Lyon within ten miles of where I had located the frame, I discussed the frame with him, being very pleased to learn that it was one of those he had ridden in 1965.
Three years later I have managed to buy , thanks to the help of a CR List member, one of Anquetil's personal frames from the 1966 season..when the frames were finished in a deep flam purple and carried those flimsy self-adhesive aluminium-film Jacques Anquetil decals. This frame has only just arrived and so I am still spending some time drooling over it
I have checked over the measurements and found that the 56cms frame has a 56 cms top-tube and 43cms chainstays, finishing in Campagnolo long road drop-outs without eyelets. The lugs are those very commonplace short point Prugnat Model 62Bis ones. The fork is missing, but photos show that it would have had a standard Wagner crown without the milled chevrons.
Just behind me, hanging on the wall of my office, as I type this email, there is Anglade's red-with-blue-panels Sauvage-Lejeune. It looks remarkably similar to the Anquetil...same lugs, Reynolds 531 tubing, Wagner crown, long Campag drop-outs.
My curiosity got the better of me about half an hour ago...so out came the measuring tape. Guess what ! The two frames are identical in all respects!
Closer scrutiny revealed the minute differences..but not in sizes or angles..but details..The brazings or lack of them are the same except that the Campag drop-outs on Anquetil's frame have no mudguard eyes, and Anglade's frame has a tiny home-made cable hanger brazed behind the seat lug, for the Mafac Dural Forge calipers. But Anquetil was still using those brakes in 1966..so his frame must have been custom-built ! The only other differences are that Jacques' frame has a slightly heavier, possibly lightly- cast bracket shell and Henri's has the standard pressed RGF one. Oh..and Jacques' frame is much, much lighter...
Blast the enamel off the frames and they will be like two peas from the same pod, except for the *J.A * and the *H.A * initials stamped in the Carre-hallmark overlapping seat-stay caps.
The mystery, if that is what it is, may well deepen when, early next year, I pick up another recently-acquired Carre-built Pro frame - one that he brazed up for none other than Anquetil's 1966 team-mate Lucien Aimar, the winner of the Tour de France that year and French Professional Road Champion in 1968. Photos of the frame show the initials* L.A * stamped in the top-eye plates.
If I can manage to plough a track through the recent deep snow to my store, I will check on the Lejeune Carre - built frames in my collection ridden by *B*ernard *G*uyot and *G*eorges *G*roussard. From memory both are about 51/52 cms in size. I would not bet on the dimensions not being identical...as the lugs, fork-crown, brazed-on fittings,and drop-outs are.
Carre was certainly a very prolific builder - I call him a Two-a-Day builder..and I don't mean coffees or cigarettes. I just wonder if he just built up a stock of standard well -designed frames, and then simply silver-soldered on the initial-stamped top-eye plates as the orders poured in.
I think that it was the French constructeur of automobiles, Renault, who, some ten or twelve years ago coined the marketing statement "Size matters..." I seem to think that to Bernard Carre size might just possibly have mattered, just a little, but there again, by using longer seat-pins and different lengths of handlebar extension, most common sized frames can be made to fit the majority of riders..
Does anyone out there happen to know what height etc Lucien Aimar was/is..because I have a funny feeling that I might soon have three identical peas from the Carre pod...if you will kindly forgive the analogy.
Norris Lockley...well and truly snowed up in Settle UK