Pantani's Bianchi

Pardon the blatant spam, but I thought you folks might be interested in this:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/mar ... arto-corse

Cheers

john

John Stevenson":x9rvi7b6 said:

Pardon the blatant spam, but I thought you folks might be interested in this:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/mar ... arto-corse

Cheers

john

Click to expand...

Feel free to spam like this all day long !!

Thank you,

Nice link!

Some hooey in it though!

"Needless to say, aerodynamics was barely even a concern a decade ago outside of time trials"

Well not if you are climbing at 15 mph, where it's almost irrelevant! It's just that the current marketing trend makes a big deal out of supposed aero improvement for frames, when rider position is much more important - look how deep the drop is, especially when you think the guy was only 5'4" or whatever. Pantani was still a competent descender, and did that amazing 2nd in the final TT on a standard bike.
OK, he admittedly had some questions he should have answered about some of the chemical assistance he might have received...

I was drooling over those pictures for 20 minutes, cheers mate. I felt very sad when I saw his bike nestling in the private Bianchi factory on a makeshift ( burn that carpet! ) display.

44t inner chainring with max 23t at back on a mountain stage :shock: That's unbelievable. Can't quite believe they put him at 5ft8 on that page, he was no more than 5ft6. Incredible rider though. All time classic bike, thanks for the link.

A couple of years ago at the Cycle show there was a Bianchi on show that was used for mountain stages by MP.

When he did his record climb up Alpe d'Huez he climbed most of it on 42-17 :shock:

Amazing.

Hi guys,

Glad you're enjoying the retro pro bike feature on Pantani's bike. It's a new segment we're trying out on Cyclingnews/BikeRadar and based on the reader responses we've received so far (and the traffic figures), you can certainly expect to see more articles like this in the future.

With that being said, it's unfortunately also difficult for us to verify 100% that everything on the bikes pictured are accurate. In the case of the Pantani bike, it turns out that old race photos from that year show him on alloy, rather than carbon, Ergopower levers and while we doubt the chainrings mounted were used in the mountains, it's hard for us to say otherwise (though we've updated the text to express doubt in both cases).

As for the comment on aerodynamics: I still stand by my assertion that it was not of primary concern back then on road stages. Yes, the saddle is mounted up high and the bars down low but especially in Italian cycling, that's as much for fashion as it is for function and certainly not something that was crafted in a wind tunnel or with optimal biomechanical efficiency in mind.

Sorry, I think we are talking at cross purposes - I absolutely agree its not important in normal road riding.

The bit I disagreed with was that implication that Mercatone Uno / Bianchi were ignorant about aerodynamics...

"Experimental chemistry" or not, Pantani was my favourite rider of that era. Thanks for that link and thanks to the compiler of the article. Angry Asian, are you the same chap who had (has?) the Rock Shocks (I refuse to write in text speak) mechanic site? If so thanks! It saved my Judys once.