Pinarello Shop & VIP Factory Tour

Roberto Florenz writes in with a report of his visit to Pinarello in Treviso:

Just back from Northern Italy with my wife. First stop was Treviso, home of the House of Pinarello. Treviso is located approx 30K from Venice. It is a beautiful town (bella citta) at the gateway to the mighty Dolomite mountains. Those that know me, know I am a great admirer of the Pinarello brand and have owned dozens of Pinas dating back to the 80's. This was my 3rd visit to the Treviso factory, the last was 2002. There have been many changes since then including a brand new state of the art manufacturing facility. The company has grown exponentially and so has the family management of the brand.

Store front in Treviso

Along with the Pinarello bike shop, the family also manages a busy work/service shop, a Pinarello Outlet store which is about three times the square footage as the bike shop and also a very popular men's & women's sportswear store. All of these are managed by the women of Pinarello. It is a classic Italian matriarchal system. The men hold the titles, yet the women make all the day to day decisions and hold all the levers of power. We were there two days and I never saw the brothers Fausto or Andrea Pinarello. It was very obvious that their sister Carla Pinarello and her daughter Chiara are the real day to day decision makers. Nani (Giovanni) Pinarello is still a fixture at the shop. At 88 years old, he's still got plenty of wit. When he first set eyes on my wife, I thought I was going to need a fire hose to pry him loose from her! Loosely translated, he kept complimenting me on her "manubrio bellissimo" = (most beautiful handlebars)

Miguel Indurain's TT & record setting 1 hour track bike

Me, Giovanni Pinarello (Nani), and my better half

My wife, me & Carla Pinarello



The black jersey won by Giovanni

Liberating my wallet of Euros for the cause.


Day 2 we were picked up at the shop and taken to the new "factory" on the out-skirts of town. They tore down the old building along with the rest of the block and built a beautiful state of the art facility. Carla and her daughter Chiara Pinarello made it clear that the new facility is not open to the public for tours of any kind so don't ask. Regardless, they are brimming with pride over the new facility and deservedly so. It is truly a magnificent site worthy of there place at the top of the cycling industry. We were there about 90 minutes and were aloud to take pictures everywhere except the R&D dept. and inside the spray booth where they were shooting 2011 prototypes. We did get to peek but were sworn to secrecy.

In retrospect, I have come away more impressed than ever with the company and the brand. My respect and admiration has never been greater for this historic brand and the family behind it. What strikes me is just how family oriented the entire organization is in classic Italian tradition. Being of Italian decent myself, of course I'm very biased, it makes me very proud to see that this brand is being managed with such respect for the family name. I currently own five Pina's and this memorable experience left me wanting a larger garage...







Chiara Pinarello explaining the finer points in the production process





Enjoy the pics and stay tuned, I will also be posting pics of our visit to the Madonna del Ghisallo and Museo del Ciclismo - an absolute must see for all who ride.

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

Passoni Frames Will Be Available in USA

Passoni, which specializes in building Ti bikes...beautiful full Ti or Ti with carbon, has reached an agreement with KGS Bikes of Texas through which the creations of Luicano Passoni can be ordered in the USA. Also available are stainless steel models using Columbus Xcr.

The following news via PezCycling News:

KGS Bikes Adds Italian Bicycle Framebuilder Passoni to Product Line
Custom bicycles designed in Texas, now built in Italy

KGS Bikes, a custom bicycle design studio in San Antonio, Texas, designs custom bicycles from $7,000-$32,000, with select components and proprietary geometry and designs. The legendary Italian framebuilder Passoni is now providing frames for custom KGS creations.

Custom Bicycle Designed Around the Owner
Kevin Saunders, President, states, "We have spent 25 years developing a bicycle positioning system that is accurate enough to successfully design one-of-a-kind bicycles for riders. These custom bicycles perform so well and are so comfortable that we now have a global following." Saunders adds, "The framebuilder has a critical role that very few can perform well enough to meet our standards. Passoni meets or exceeds those standards." Silvia Passoni, President of Passoni SAS, says, "We are excited to find that KGS Bikes has the Passoni Philosophy. This is why we chose them to become our sole dealer in the USA."

While KGS Bikes has six different framebuilders who can provide custom frames serving as the foundation of their custom bicycles, only Parlee and now Passoni occupy the highest premium tier. Saunders says, "We have been working with Bob Parlee for years and his Parlee frames have consistently delivered the kind of perfection that our most discriminating clients demand. We have been looking for another framebuilder who could combine carbon fiber and use titanium to this level of perfection. We finally feel that we have a match with Passoni that is on par with Parlee."

KGS Bikes has focused exclusively on the art of the custom bicycle and has built a reputation for excellence that draws a global clientele. Saunders explains, "When people fly in from around the world to commission a custom bicycle, they expect perfection. We are fortunate that we have people like Passoni to help us create bikes that not only are perfect matches to the owner's anatomy, but are true works of art as well."

Passoni creates custom bicycle frames made from titanium, carbon fiber and "Lightsteel" stainless steel, as well as premium components that are custom branded and painted to match the Passoni frames. Passoni adds, "With KGS Bikes' ability to design the geometry for the owners, we will be providing custom KGS / Passoni frames that will be beautiful, exciting and available nowhere else."

About KGS Bikes:
KGS Bikes is known around the world as the premiere custom bicycle design studio. Kevin Saunders, President, has over 25 years' experience in bicycle positioning and customization. He also has a broad knowledge of anatomy, structural engineering and industrial design. In addition, KGS Bikes designs bicycles utilizing Parlee, Kent Eriksen, Serotta, Zinn, Co-Motion and Guru. They also feature the best available components from around the world. Visit http://kgsbikes.com for more information, including beautiful photography of the bikes artfully created for their owners.

Photos: examples, top to bottom, of full Ti, Ti/carbon, and stainless steel models

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

Bianchi Oltre in Matte Black

This matte black Bianchi "Oltre" has been spotted at the bike shows but isn't available in the catalog. I think all of you Bianchi guys should campaign for it. Or, full celeste? (note: a reader wrote in saying, "It will be a limited release later in the year...")

Thanks to Bob for the photo tip. You can click on the photos to large them.

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

For Cyclists in Tuscany, Winning Isn’t the Point

L'Eroica has reached a level of fame that it has now been a feature story in the New York Times. Some may despair about the ever growing size of this event and the implications of that. For those that do there are venues that are smaller, see my "2010 Vintage Bike Rides in Italy" calendar. I will publish the 2011 dates as soon as I learn of them.

The New York Times article:

For Cyclists in Tuscany, Winning Isn’t the Point
by GAIA PIANIGIANI
Published: October 6, 2010

GAIOLE IN CHIANTI, Italy — On the first Sunday of October, almost 3,500 cyclists took to the hills of central Tuscany, riding vintage bicycles, wearing woolen knits and old-fashioned goggles and eating bread and prosciutto.

This may have looked like a film set for a re-enactment of Italy’s famed road race, the Giro d’Italia, circa 1930. But it was in fact the “Eroica,” Tuscany’s non-competitive race, in which riders take aging racing bikes over winding, unpaved Tuscan roads to honor the days when cycling was bigger than soccer in Italy.

You don’t need thighs of steel to join. Now in its 14th year, the race draws riders from around the world, ranging in age from 15 to 90, with the occasional world champion like Francesco Moser joining in. Riders can choose routes to match their abilities; the shortest is 24 miles long, the longest 127 miles.

The only requirements are a vintage bike, vintage clothing and, it would appear, a healthy appetite. Because there are no time trials, stopping for a sandwich and a glass of Chianti is perfectly acceptable.

The race is a throwback to when “doping meant red wine with eggs,” said Roland Wolbold, 65, a racing-bike mechanic who drove 620 miles from Stuttgart, Germany, to participate.

Some bikers even take personal precautionary measures in case of sudden hunger on the back roads of Tuscany. “There’s a lot of smuggling going on here,” said one young cyclist as he pedaled downhill and grabbed a panino wrapped in yellow butcher’s paper from a friend before speeding off. “We mostly smuggle mortadella sandwiches.”

The race has grown each year, with 3,480 participants this year, up from 82 in 1997, its first year, said Giancarlo Brocci, its founder.

Every Monday morning when he was a child, Mr. Brocci, now 56, used to read the cycling news of the Gazzetta dello Sport, a sports daily, to the illiterate elderly of Gaiole, kindling his passion for cycling. But L’Eroica — “heroic” in Italian — did not start off merely to pay homage to that period, but as a way to promote and protect the Tuscan heritage of white gravel roads, he said, where riding is breathtakingly beautiful.

“Being at L’Eroica has become fashionable for people all over the world,” Mr. Brocci said, adding that this year’s race attracted 748 foreign riders from 26 countries, including 47 from the United States and Canada.

Bob Sabatini, a 56-year-old wine distributor from South Carolina, was among them, racing on a Poletti bike, built in Modena, the city that his great-grandfather left for Ellis Island in 1902. “This tour is like apple pie to me,” he said, “It’s nostalgia, it’s a comfort zone that brings you back to the old days of cycling.”

There is no prize for winning. “What really counts here is the bike,” said Nathalie Labat, from Tarbes, France, on a 1912 Moro with wooden rims and a curved handlebar.

The bikes for L’Eroica must be steel-framed racing bikes built before 1987 or newer bicycles assembled with vintage accessories. The well-appointed biker is outfitted in a striped woolen jersey and old leather shoes, with a spare tubular tire around the waist.

In Italy, where cycling is also considered a national sport, aficionados still speak with awe of the 1940s and early ’50s when the rivalry between the cyclists Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali led newspaper headlines.

Back then, every Italian boy dreamed of being one of them, not David Beckham. Bicycles were the most common means of transportation, but cycling also represented the only sport that was part of people’s daily lives. Bars would hang boards with the latest bulletin from the Tour de France, and brides would dash out of wedding parties to greet the passing Giro cyclists.

“Italians are all about motorcycles and Vespas,” said Mario Armando, 46, a vintage bikes retailer and mechanic. “But in the past, Fiat made bikes as well, at the beginning of the 1900s.”

Giorgio Olmi, 80, riding a 1965 Peugeot bike on the 24-mile route, said he would cover twice that distance to go to work every day when he was 16. (At the time, he had started racing in amateur competitions, but he broke his bike in a race and could not afford a new one. “A bike would be worth two months of my salary,” he said.)

Racing on gravel roads in vintage bikes is not exactly comfortable. There’s a lot of bouncing, sliding and careful braking. And pushing a 30-pound bike uphill is a challenge to many.

At the top of the first steep hill, the heady odor of pressed grapes was not enough to soothe the evident pain of several riders. Some pushed heavily on the pedals; others pushed their bikes uphill while their wives — also cyclists — hooted that they had been waiting for them for half an hour.

“Cycling was never fun,” Mr. Wolbold said. “It is literally painfully beautiful.”

New York Times story with all photos here.

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

Max Lelli Partners with Sarto Workshops and FRM

For 2011 Max Lelli has partnered with Sarto and FRM to create an entirely new line of bicycle frames based on the concept of made to measure, the option to customize down to the tube level, and Made in Italy. Seven new models are offered.

The new direction of Max Lelli bikes is explained like this:

"Since Italy was the birthplace of modern cycling, the home of the best frame (and component) manufacturers for decades, and arguably still the country with the most passion for the sport, a “Made in Italy” bicycle is held to – and generally meets – a high standard of quality in design, workmanship, and aesthetics. There are still a few bicycle manufacturers out there, icons from the eras of Binda, Bartali, Gimondi, Coppi, Argentin, Bugno, Chiapucci, Moser, Battaglin, and Fondriest, claiming to produce made-in-Italy frames. However, it seems that lately their factories may have moved. What, haven’t you heard of Provincia di Guangdong in Italia? It’s a little far from Veneto, but hey - the Italian tricolore flag painted on the frame must mean it’s the real thing,…certo?

For a while it seemed that Chinese monocoque manufacturing was going to take over the industry completely. Frames produced this way had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive, readily produced in great numbers, and of fairly good overall quality. Max Lelli made frames at a Chinese factory; they were (and are) very good frames, with great ride quality and responsive handling.

But there are limitations to monocoque, and there are limitations to large-scale manufacturing. The first has to do with customizability: essentially, there is none. Once a mold is made, it cannot be altered. For a given frame design, four or perhaps five different size molds are made, and that is the limit of size options for that frame. The second limitation has to do with quality control. That pretty, woven top layer on the monocoque frame doesn’t represent the somewhat chaotic reality of the carbon fiber matrix inside of the hollow frame; inside the frame, carbon fibers suspended in resin are jumbled every which way. When the bladder is inflated inside the frame to compress the fibers and resin into a semblance of even wall thickness, any wrinkles in the bladder or other irregularities in the forces on the wet resin matrix can create weak spots in the frame. Since the frame is made in one or at most two pieces, it is impossible to see any potential weaknesses inside the frame.

For these reasons, Max Lelli Bicycles made the decision to stop manufacturing our frame designs using monocoque molds, and instead switch to a method involving hand-wrapping the junctions between individually-crafted carbon fiber tubes. This method inherently offers a much greater degree of control over the quality since every part of the process is overseen by the frame builder. Instead of pouring resin into a mold and hoping that everything comes out okay (incrociando le dita, or crossing the fingers, as we would say in Italy), the tubes are made from the inside out so that the placement of each fiber is known – in fact planned – and nothing is left to chance. This is accomplished by wrapping individual carbon fiber threads around a mandrel to make the tubes. Then the tubes are cut, aligned together, and the joints are wrapped by hand with more fiber. Each step of the process is completely under the eye of the builder, and completely controlled. No guessing, no surprises, and no mistakes. That’s why we are confident in offering a lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects for each Made In Italy Max Lelli frame.

Customization: How To Make an Old Idea Really New
The handcrafted tube-to-tube method of frame construction used for Max Lelli frames in Sarto’s workshop not only allows infinite customizability in terms of the types and lengths of tubes used and the angles at which they’re joined (i.e. frame size and geometry,) but the ability to strengthen the joints as necessary depending on the needs of the rider for which the frame is designed.

We freely admit that Max Lelli is not unique in offering customizable carbon frames; there are other companies that give the client the option of custom geometry and choose-you-own paint schemes. However, we have a new idea. (We know, new ideas in bicycle manufacture are about as rare as comfortable saddles after 100 miles, but please…hear us out!) Why not offer, in addition to a completely unique geometry, the option to choose the tubes used to construct the frame? There are many choices available, from ultra-light to ultra-stiff, from round (highest strength to weight) to aero. Some of these tubes have been judiciously matched in constructing our stable of five pre-designed Max Lellis (the Vipera, Superleggera, Ultraforte, Liger, and Piuma). However, there are tens or hundreds of possible different combinations of those tubes, any of which could result in an absolutely unique final product.

Do you have ideas about what would best suit your riding style? Why not collaborate with us to design the perfect frame for you, not only in terms of fit but also in terms of function? And let’s not forget style, too; naturally, there will be many paint options available to put the final, exceptional touch on your unique frame (which will have your name on it, of course).

Here is the bottom line, il morale della favola: the world is full of commodity products. Marketers and the companies they work for make billions convincing you – and millions of others – that these products are created with you in mind, to satisfy a unique need that you have. And yet, aren’t you singular and truly individual as a person, with experiences, thoughts, desires, and dreams that no one else shares? Then why should your bicycle be a commodity product that any Tom, Riccardo, or Hårøld can buy and ride? For the maximum in customization, for the maximum in personalization, for the maximum in truly unique style….make your next bicycle a Max Lelli."


For me it's interesting to see carbon frame manufacturing is showing additional movement towards returning to Italy. Whether these capabilities will expand to meet the quantity demands of the most famous brands remains to be seen. On the subject of Made in Italy the matter of "transformation" has been discussed here several times and it will also be interesting to see how this plays out in the future as well.

For more information visit www.maxlellibikes.com

Photos: three of the seven new models

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

Le Coq Sportif 2010 L'Eroica Reports

L'Eroica report / DAY 1 / Gaiole In Chianti - The Village gets ready:

L'Eroica report / DAY 1 / Gaiole In Chianti - The Village gets ready from Le Coq Sportif on Vimeo.

L'Eroica report / DAY 2 / Flea Market & Bikes distribution;

L'Eroica report / DAY 2 / Flea Market & Bikes distribution from Le Coq Sportif on Vimeo.

L'Eroica report / DAY 3 / The Race:

L'Eroica report / DAY 3 / The Race from Le Coq Sportif on Vimeo.

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

2010 L'Eroica Video

The 2010 L'Eroica was held this past weekend. Here is a video from the event that begins with the 205 km riders starting in the dark:



L'Eroica an event that relives the heroic age of the "Giants of the Road". Participants ride on vintage racing bicycles and wearing the wool jerseys of bygone eras through some of the most beautiful roads of Chianti, Valdarbia and Valdorcia, with many sections of unpaved surfaces ("strade bianche", gravel & shale roads) which makes it possible to relive the atmosphere of "heroic" times of cycling.

This year there were 3,480 riders with slightly more than 20% coming from outside of Italy and representing five continents.

Among the related L'Eroica ride stories that have appeared here in ICJ are:

Martin Appel's L'Eroica adventure in three parts: Part I, Part II, and Part III

Riding L'Eroica on a 3 speed Pashley (includes a link to a video)

Riding L'Eroica on a fixed gear

You can use the "search" engine to the right find more L'Eroica stories & information.

Official website: www.eroica-ciclismo.it

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,500 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.