Missy's Must-Have Accessory, Circa 1993

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Melissa--but we all called her Missy--and we wanted all of her accessories.

OK, this isn't about fashion, or a fairy tale, though I suppose it could be.  It's a story about cycling and, in particular, a part of it in which I was active for a few years. 

Some of you may have figured out that I'm talking about mountain biking and the girl in question is a girl in the "You go, grrrl!" sense:  none other than Missy "The Missile" Giove.


 She dominated her sport to a degree--perhaps to an even greater degree--than Eddy Mercx did two decades earlier.  If anything, I'd say her domination was more like that of Martina Navratilova in tennis a decade earlier.I actually saw her ride twice and I don't think I've ever seen a fiercer competitor anywhere. I take that back:  She wasn't a competitor because she couldn't be:  No one else could have competed against her.  

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that she was simply the fiercest athlete, and one of the fiercest people, I've ever seen.  I say that with great admiration:  Her firepower came from her intensity and an innate need to better herself rather than from hyped-up rivalries and petty jealousies.  She reminded me, in an odd way, of the first two lines in one of Emily Dickinson's most famous poems:  "Because I could not stop for Death/He very kindly stopped and waited for me."  Missy did not stop for anything because, really, I don't think she could:  The only way to catch up to, or with her, it seemed, was to wait.

To say that she was the first superstar of downhill mountain bike racing, a sport then in its juvescence,  would be to trivialize her dominance.  For a time, she held the world's downhill speed record.  Not just the record for women, mind you:  The Record.

Now tell me:  If you saw someone like her, wouldn't you want her accessories, too?

Perhaps the most iconic--and, at the time, best-selling--of them were her Onza handlebar ends.  For those of us who spent a lot of time riding dropped-bar road bikes before trying mountain biking, one of our biggest complaints was the lack of hand positions on the flat handlebars.  Most of us change hand positions, sometimes frequently, on rides of more than a few minutes.  The Onza bar ends offered at least a forward, somewhat aerodynamic position and a forward-facing flat section that somewhat resembled the "ramps" of road handlebars.  

I still see Onza bar ends fairly often.  Most often, they're on a Specialized or Trek or other mountain bike from the early- or mid-'90's that someone re-purposed as a delivery bike or "beater" and simply didn't bother to take them off.  I'm guessing that the ones that were actually ridden off-road are in landfills simply because most other mountain bike accessories and components that were ridden hard are there, too.  No matter how good such items are, they, like anything else, can only take so much abuse.

Other companies imitated the Onza bar end and some offered them in a rainbow of colors.  (If I recall correctly, the Onzas were available only in black because they were heat-treated--or, at least, that was the rationale the company gave.)  But most riders found that they didn't use the forward bend much, if at all.  Plus, trail and woods riders found that the shape made them easy to entangle in branches, brambles and other obstacles.  Furthermore, mountain bikers (some of them, anyway) were becoming weight-conscious--about their bikes, that is.  Onzas and similarly-configured bar ends weighed more than some of the handlebars to which they were clamped.

So, after a few years, those J-shaped extensions were replaced by more minimalist pieces that kept the "flat" but eliminated the forward bend:

Even so, Onza bar ends and their carbon-copies were a "must have" for about half a decade.  Very few other accessories last for more than a season, even if they're used by a smokin' hot chick named Missy:

Campagnolo Gran Sport: Act II

Yesterday, I mentioned the Campagnolo Gran Sport and its offspring.  As I said, although the original GS derailleur ceased production in 1963, the name wasn't abandoned:  It was re-appropriated in 1975.  In a way, Campagnolo came "full circle" with the Nuovo Grand Sport rear derailleur:  It shared the geometry and overall design of the Record and its succ essors, but had a cruder finish and hexagonal rather than recessed allen bolts, while the Record, Nuovo Record and Super Records were refinements of the original Gran Sport.    The 1970's Gran Sport was situated below the Record but above Campagnolo's "budget" Valentino and Gran Turismo derailleurs, which cost more than, and didn't shift as well as, Japanese derailleurs of the time.  

Campagnolo Nuovo Gran Sport derailleur, late 1970s

Also, over the few years that followed the introduction of the original GS, Campy created a line of Gran Sport components: hubs, crankset, bottom bracket, headset, pedals and seatpost, but no brakes.  This gruppo is believed to be the first such comprehensive ensemble of professional-level equipment since Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) made the components-of-choice for Six-Day Racers as well as much of the peloton during the 1930s. (BSA also made some very well-respected bicycles.)  Soon, Campagnolo Gran Sport parts would be nearly as common among elite cyclists as BSA stuff had been.




A new gruppo was also created around the Nuovo Gran Sport.  It would include something the original Gran Sport group didn't have:  brakes.  (Interestingly, BSA made brakes to go with their other components, but Campagnolo didn't come out with their now-famous sidepulls until 1968, a year after the Nuovo Record derailleur was introduced.) The arms were all but identical to those of the Record.  However, the cable adjuster was a knurled dome and didn't have the rubber "O" ring seen on Record brakes.  More important, the quick release could only be opened or closed completely, in contrast to the infinitely-variable quick release on the Record, which could be opened part way.


One of the most interesting Nuovo Gran Sport components was the crankset, which had a three-arm spider:

Gran Sport crankset, 1970s

Later, it was replaced by a five-arm spider much like that of the Record:




The headset shared the same bearings and bearing surfaces with Record and Super Record headsets.  However, the Gran Sport, made entirely from steel, had only two wrench "flats" on the top adjustable race, while Record-level headsets had multiple sides that to fit a standard headset wrench.



Some people preferred the Gran Sport because it didn't have any names or logos on the adjustable race or lower head race. In that way, it resembled the headsets found on some old British frames like Claud Butler.

The pedals were based on the Record's quill design.  The bearings and bearing surfaces were the same. However, the NGS didn't share the Record's knurling on the outside of the cone locknut that helped to prevent dirt from working its way in.  In addition, the dust caps on the NGS were plastic (steel on the Record and alloy on the Super Record) and the cutouts on the cages were a bit smaller.  Finally, as with the rear (and front) derailleurs, the finish was cruder.  However, nobody seemed to notice any difference in functionality between the Gran Sport and Record series pedals.



Possibly the most inelegant (at least to my eye) constituent of the Nuovo Gran Sport line was the shift levers.  They functioned just like the Record levers but, like other Gran Sport components, had a less-polished finish. And the adjuster nuts, while easy enough to use, were not attractive, at least to my tastes.




In contrast, the Gran Sport front derailleur was all but indistinguishable from the Record:



Finally, here is my favorite component in the Gran Sport lineup:




These hubs were part of the Nuovo Gran Sport gruppo.  But they weren't called "Gran Sport". Instead they were known as "Nuovo Tipo", the name under which they had been made since 1965, a decade before the introduction of the Nuovo Gran Sport derailleur.  The hubs were simply incorporated into the group.


I had two sets of wheels with these hubs.  In fact, my very first set of custom wheels was built around them, with Super Champion 58 rims and Robergel "Sport" spokes.  I rode them on my first long bike tours and, after a few hundred miles, the hubs spun just as smoothly as the Record hubs I would later acquire.  

TIpos shared the same bearings, cones and axles with Record hubs of the same era.  However, the inner races on the Tipos were stamped, while those on Records were forged.  That meant that Tipos weren't as smooth out of the box as Records and needed "breaking in".  They also probably didn't last as long, but I knew cyclists (myself included) who rode plenty of miles, some of them hard, on Tipos.  

More visible differences, though, were in the logo (Tipos used the older-style "flying wheel" while Records had the "world" insignia), the oil hole clips on the Records and lack of same on the Tipos, and the knurled quick-release locknut on the Tipo vs. the nut with the D-ring on the Record.



Finally, the large-flanged version of the Record had oval cutouts in the flanges, while the Tipos had portal-style holes reminiscent of classic hubs from the 1930s to the 1950s.




Probably the best-known bike (in the US, anyway) to come equipped with Nuovo Gran Sport components was the Raleigh Competition from 1977 to 1985. (Before 1977 , the Competition came with a Huret Jubilee rear derailleur and other French components.)  The NGS gruppo was, not surprisingly, more likely to be found on Italian bikes.  I recall seeing Olmos and Cioccs outfitted with the full Nuovo Gran Sport ensemble, except for the rear derailleur, which was a Nuovo Record.  Stuyvesant Bicycle  and a few other shops sold them.  I don't know whether the shops changed the derailleurs or whether the bikes were originally spec'd that way.

Whatever the case, Nuovo Gran Sport equipment, while good and reliable, never became terribly popular in the US.  I think one reason was the crude finish of some parts, especially the rear derailleur.  For about  the same price as NGS, one could buy Shimano Dura-Ace or SunTour Superbe equipment, which were beautifully finished and offered some of the features (like the infinitely variable brake quick-release) Campagnolo included in their Record series but omitted from Gran Sport.  And SunTour derailleurs and levers shifted better than their counterparts from Campagnolo.

Campagnolo finally retired the Gran Sport name and lineup in 1985, the same year the Nuovo and Super Record series ended their runs.  The Record lines were superseded by the Record-C, while the Gran Sport's berth below the Record was taken by the Chorus and Athena gruppos.  And Campagnolo stopped making their lower-end Valentino and Gran Turismo derailleurs and developed new "mass market" component lines called Victory and Triomphe.

Campagnolo Gran Sport And The Records

The other day, I wrote about the Nivex rear derailleur.  In my post, I mentioned the derailleur that foreclosed Nivex's future: the Campagnolo Gran Sport.

The first GS derailleur looked somewhat like every racing derailleur Campagnolo would make for the next four decades.  Debuted at the 1949 Salon de Milan (That name has a nice ring, doesn't it?), a.k.a., the Milan Bicycle Show, the original Gran Sport had, in embryonic form, the dropped parallelogram we would see on all of Campy's racing derailleurs until the late 1980's.  However, that mechanism had no return spring and was operated by a "double" cable--actually, a cable that looped through the body in the same manner as it did in most French derailleurs of the time.  






No one seems to know whether anything more than a prototype of this derailleur was ever made.  However, a year later, the "double" cable was replaced with a single cable that moves the parallelogram outward or inward, depending on the direction of the shift.  If it wasn't  not the first derailleur to employ such a system, it's almost certainly the first such derailleur to be widely used by racers.  

1951 Gran Sport

 Tullio Campagnolo made various refinements to the derailleur over its manufacturing run, which ended in 1963.  It represented a great improvement in shifting ease over the rod-actuated derailleurs Campagnolo and other companies made before the Gran Sport and the plunger-actuated derailleurs made by Simplex and other companies.  The GS was also mechanically simpler:  no small consideration in races over pockmarked postwar roads and teams with limited budgets.

First generation Record, 1963

The Record, introduced in 1963, looked all but identical to the last version of the Gran Sport.  However, the pulley cage was moved slightly forward and upward in relation to the jockey pulley.  This refinement widened the range of the derailleur and improved the shifting ease somewhat. 

Campagnolo Nuovo Record

Four years after that, one of the most iconic derailleurs of all time--the Campagnolo Nuovo Record--would first see the light of day.  While it didn't offer much technical refinement over the Record, it looked far more refined, in its polished cold-forged aluminum (in contrast to the chrome-plated brass and steel of the Record and Gran Sport).  Campagnolo would make the Nuovo Record--and it would be the most common derailleur in the peloton--until 1985.  A further refinement of the Nuovo Record--the Super Record--would appear in 1974.  As popular as it was, it did not displace the Nuovo Record, with both derailleurs ending their runs at the same time.

Later version  Super Record

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Note:  I would like to acknowledge The Retrogrouch, Bicycle Quarterly, Classic Rendezvous, Disraeli Gears, Velo Base, Classic LIghtweights UK and old Campagnolo literature for the information in this post.

The Big Dig 2

I try not to complain too much about the weather we've been having here in NYC.  After all, they've had over two meters (7 feet) of snow in Boston this winter.

When I heard about that, I wondered how bicycle commuters were coping.  Some, I'm sure, are taking the "T", as Boston is one of the few American cities with anything resembling a meaningful mass transit network.  But others are determined to keep on riding.  I would, too, as long as the snow didn't turn to ice.

One Beantown commuter was confronted with a fifteen-foot (4.5 meter) mound of snow in the middle of his riding route.  Someone once told me that when you're faced with an obstacle, you can go around or through it. Apparently, that cyclist and some of his fellow riders chose the latter option.

Yes, they tunneled through the mound.  Locals have nicknamed it "Big Dig 2", in reference to a recent highway tunnel project.

Given The Choice, I Would Ride...

Having spent four decades as a devoted cyclist, and having worked in bike shops, I've seen lots of bikes come and go.  I have worked on bikes, parts and accessories made by companies that no longer exist (or, in some cases, by people long dead or who stopped for whatever reasons).  Some richly deserved to be tossed into the dust pail of history; others should have been put in the recycle bin or, at least, the parts box.  

Of course, I took a few "test" rides on interesting bikes I repaired, maintained and assembled.  But there are many more that I never got to ride.  If someone asked me what bike, no longer made, I would ride if given the chance, I'd have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.  A classic velo from a constructeur like Rene Herse or Jo Routens would be high on my list.  So would something from Jack Taylor, especially a tandem.  (Of course, I might not be in a position to truly appreciate it, as I haven't ridden tandems very much!) I'd also be curious to try an early Schwinn Paramount or Colnago as well as some bikes from Americans who built bikes for the six-day racers.  Finally, I'd like to ride some very early Mercians (they started building in 1946) and compare them to more recent ones and, of course, my own.

But if someone were to ask me what part or component I'd like to try, the answer would be much easier:  a Nivex derailleur.  I have grown especially curious about it since "The Retrogrouch" wrote a post on his blog about it and in the most recent Bicycle Quarterly, Jan Heine described the one he installed on his "Rene Herse", built in 2011.  Even he admits that its advantages weren't worth the time and effort he had to put into finding parts for, and rebuilding, the mechanism.  Still, his and "Retrogrouch"'s description of it have fascinated me.

Classic Nivex rear derailleur on Alex Singer bike.  From the Bicycle Quarterly Press

I actually saw one or two--or, at least, derailleurs that closely resembled it--when I worked in shops and the first two times I toured in France.  It makes sense:  Those tours were in 1980 and 1984, and I started working in bike shops in 1975.  Dedicated cyclists, especially in Europe, have tended to keep bikes they like for longer than people keep cars and other items.  So it makes sense that there were still cyclists--mostly of a certain age--riding on bikes from the 1930's, '40's and '50's, when the Nivex was produced.  And, because of its rugged construction (mostly from steel) and design (mounted under the chainstay), it tends to last a long time.  

I think there are several reasons why they fell into disuse.  One, of course, is that the supply dried up.  But more important, once Campagnolo introduced its Gran Sport derailleur--one of the first parallelogram derailleurs made to mount on the rear dropout--bike builders made their frames with dropouts for derailleurs like it rather than the bracket brazed on the chainstay that Nivex and derailleurs like it required.  And other derailleur makers, most notably Huret and Simplex, followed Campagnolo's lead.  Also, as more bikes were spec'd with derailleurs that mounted on the dropout, and more cyclists rode with them, people--including mechanics--forgot how to use, maintain and repair the Nivex.  Finally, as production of Nivex derailleurs and others like it ceased and it fell into disuse, parts for it--and, just as important, the hubs, freewheels and companion components that maximized the advantages of the derailleur--became more difficult to find, especially in the days before eBay.  

(These days, you can go to eBay.  But if you do, be prepared to pay for Nivex and other classic French parts, as they are prized by Japanese collectors!)

From what Jan Heine and "The Retrogrouch" have said, the Nivex derailleur offered all of the advantages other derailleur makers would later try to achieve with spring-loaded top pivot bolts, dropped parallelograms, slant parallelograms and indexing.  That is the reason I'd love to try one.  But I don't think I'd order a bike, as Jan did, that's made for it simply because of the difficulties I mentioned earlier.  

SunTour S-1

One of the few recent attempts to make a derailleur that, in any way, mimicked the Nivex is the SunTour  S-1 of the early 1990's.  "Retrogrouch" said that, to his knowledge, the only bike to come equipped with it was the 1993 Schwinn Criss Cross.  (My Criss Cross, from a year earlier, had SunTour "Accushift" derailleurs and indexed levers mounted on the handlebars.)  Even though, from all accounts, it worked well enough, shop owners and mechanics complained about it and customers didn't want it because it differed from the standards of the time.  Plus, Shimano so thoroughly dominated the market by that time that any other company--especially one that was on the ropes, as SunTour clearly was by that time--would have had a difficult time introducing a "new" concept.  (Most people at that time didn't know about Nivex.)  As far as I know, nobody bought the S-1 as a replacement part because it couldn't be retrofitted to most bikes, which lacked the necessary brazed-on chainstay boss. Perhaps one could improvise a mounting bracket, but who would have taken the time to do that?

Anyway, I would like to ride a Nivex one day.  Jan, if I'm ever out your way, could I borrow your bike for a while?  I may even give you my PMP crank for the privilege! ;-)