Jan 26 1997 GT / Saturn Team Road Bike

GT retailers always wondered when GT would enter the road bike market and become a "complete bike line". Many thought with the introduction of the dropbar Tachyon model cross bike in 1990 that they would be coming as soon as 1991. That wasn't to be. During that time period in cycling road bike sales at most stores in the US were a mere 2-5% of the market as mountain bikes continued to soar in sales. It's not that GT wasn't working on the product behind the scenes. While visiting GT in May of 93 for an International distributors meeting for introducing the sample bikes for the 94 model year a number of people were standing in a parking lot sampling some of what turned out to be Suntour's last mountain bike product offerings on sample bikes when GT's Team manager Doug Martin road into the parking lot aboard a GT Ti road bike. Heads immediately turned and questions began flying from everyone. Later that day it was announced to distributors that GT would in fact have a complete line of road bikes in 1994. That fall GT announced that they had entered into an agreement with the then US Cycling Federation to provide all the bikes for the US Cycling team through the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta. This partnership announcement was called "Project 96" and it involved dollar sponsorships from EDS and CocaCola. A tubing agreement with True Temper, Technical support from Mavic on wheels with GT's Tech Shop in Longmont, Colorado lead by Forrest Yelverton, Dave Tiemeyer laying down the engineering for the bikes and a host of talented welders doing the frame builds. Over the years GT sponsored the Shaklee, Saturn and Adecco Lotto pro teams as well. A number of past a current cycling greats raced on these GT sponsored teams over the years. Among them Levi Leipheimer, Mark and Frank McCormack, George Hincapie, Fred Rodriguez, Kent Bostick, Norm Alvis, Andre Tchmil and a host of others.

The 1998 season alone saw Saturn's mens and womens teams post 101 victories, 67 second-place finishes, and 53 third-place spots. 2000 was the only year GT has been raced (ZR aluminums) in the UCI pro tour and Tour de France ridden then by Lotto-Adecco and World Cup winner Andrei Tchmil.

Today's post is a late 97 produced frame that was one of many road frames built for the 1998 Saturn cycling team. A team bike painted on the GT Edge 853 platform. I've been told that this bike was ridden and raced by former team member Mark McCormack. Serial number on the bike is SAT 9772. The frame was fillet brazed with Reynolds 853 tubing.

A bike blog buddy of mine in So Cal who has a fleet of nice road bikes picked this one up a few years back and when thinning his herd a bit he offered it to me. Always on the lookout to add a team bike or two I was an easy sucker for it and rightly so as the past four years I've managed to put between 3-4,000 miles on a road bike. I'm blessed to have a ride group called the "morning misfits" where I live... mostly 40-55 yr old businessmen/riders that gather at 5:15 three mornings a week to bang out 30 miles before work at 23 MPH seeking to keep their aging waistlines thinner. I've only put a few hundred miles on this one since building it up because I also have a GT Edge steel from 94 (the 5th steel roadie built by GT), Team Manager Doug Martin's 97 GT Edge steel (my favorite), a 98 Edge Ti that sees half my road time and a 2009 Team Jelly Belly Carbon that sees the other 50% of my road miles. I also picked up former Lance lieutenant and Mtb racer Greg Randolph's Edge steel last year but have yet been on the road with it. I also have a NOS Edge Steel road frame out of French Excell tubing that is in the period correct build process.

Bike has a GT Edge carbon fork with aluminum steer tube, Dura Ace 9 build with Mavic/DA wheels, Profile Hammerhead bar and stem and Syncros Post w/Flite saddle. Yes that's a number hanger on the bottom of the top tube....proof that this one was around long before the timing chip.

Don't be confused if you see a bike that looks like this one listed on ebay or other places with a yellow fork and lower end components....it's not the same bike. GT in their sponsorship deal partnered with Saturn on some promotional bikes that were given away by auto dealers to those that bought new cars. Those promo attempted look-alike bikes were TIG welded in Taiwan and had Shimano 300EX components. I've seen people attempt to sell off these promo bikes as true team bikes. Get close up pics before buying.