Oregon Cycling Magazine

by David Feldman

The Competition Bicycle: A Photographic History
by Jan Heine, 2008
Vintage Bicycle Press, hardcover, 176 pages. $60

From high wheels to fat mountain bike tires, on roads, tracks, dirt paths and rocky trails, short sprints to ultra marathon distances, bicycles have been raced for as long as they have existed in any form.
There have been books on the history of racing before but (at least in English) there have been no books on the history of the machines themselves.  Author Jan Heine and photographer Jean-Pierre Praderes have produced a worthy effort in their second photo-essay bicycle book.  The first, “The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles,” (2005 Vintage, $60) was a display of touring and randonneur bikes built in France in the 20th century.  This new book shows a small part of the enormous variety of racing bikes used from the last decade of the 19th century through most of the 20th.  Like their previous book, this one is a visual feast of first-class photography and layout.  Praderes’ beautiful pictures are supplemented with dozens of archival photos, from a 19th century athlete standing behind his high-wheeler to Tony Rominger riding the hour record that he held in 1994.  On the way are numerous famous riders—Eddy Merckx, Greg Lemond, Fausto Coppi and Andy Hampsten among them—as well as a couple of amateur racers, at least one independent pro rider whose three bikes are shown, and other riders of historical importance with their machines.

The bikes selected are from a wide range of competitive riding—land speed record, mountain bike racing, hour record (and TANDEM hour record!) randonneur, three bikes of notable racing women, one from the road, one from the track, and one mountain bike.

This isn’t a complete history of racing bikes—nobody could put one together unless it was the size of a telephone book and cost $1000!  There is much more space devoted to pictures than text—there is just enough to give some historical context to the bikes.  Most people attracted to this book will know, for instance, that early Continental road races were contested on surfaces that mountain bikers might shy away from today—hence the sturdy build of the two 1920’s Tour De France machines, an Alcyon and an Automoto, included.  They might know about the rivalry between Italian riders on 1940’s Tour de France teams, they might know a little bit about early American track racing or European motor-paced racing.
Probably very few know about “porteur” (newspaper carrier!) racing in France which lasted for several decades and not even many mountain bikers likely have seen a 1980’s aluminum Cunningham.

Early on, both in cycling history and this book, are two unique frame design exercises—the “Labor” from France, with it’s single sided fork and main triangle, and the Dursley-Pedersen, a bike that reconfigures the main triangle, seat post, and saddle with an assembly of thin tubes supporting a hammock-like seat.  It has been revived several times over the years and is probably in production somewhere today!

The “constructeur” concept shows up several times—a Rene Herse racing bike and long-distance tandem (respectively, the 1972 womens’ world road champion’s bike and the bike on which the 1961 Paris-Brest-Paris was won) and in an American incarnation—an early 1980’s aluminum Cunningham mountain bike with many parts designed and made by frame builder Charlie Cunningham in California.  Speaking of aluminum bikes, their early roots show up too in the bolted together Caminargent from the 1930’s and the more practical and successful welded Barra of a decade later which was a true flash from the future in its welding and tube shaping.

One interesting and very important feature for a book on the history of bicycles—geometry in stick-figure bikes on two pages in the back of the book.  This quantifies an old, true story—how bikes changed over the years as roads and probably as the technique of riders changed.   The Delangle track bike from 1939 (very similar to most track bikes used until the 1980’s) is very similar to three of the 1980’s road racing bikes featured.

A nice surprise was the number of American-built bikes, six out of the thirty-four featured—two Jazz Age track bikes, two very different road bikes from the 1980’s—one used in the Giro d’Italia, the other in Race Across America (also showing two distinct generations of Shimano equipment—the RAAM bike an example of the “aero” dead end and the other with parts that proved more practical and popular) an innovative early mountain bike, a British-inspired time trial bike built in 1975 by a gentleman now regarded as one of the US’s best artisan frame builders.

I’d like to emphasize something that I’ve learned spending most of my working life as a bike mechanic.  Racing bikes are usually not preserved after their usefulness as “sporting goods” has gone.  They are scattered to the wind after their peak seasons:

They are training bikes, beater bikes, parted out, loaned out, and very many times not valued or kept track of by their former pilots.  It is too easy to cannibalize bikes for parts, and in the case of steel frames (almost all of the bikes featured are steel) modify and repaint them beyond recognition.

The man who rode one of the featured bikes in this book now runs bike tours in Italy. One of his later team bikes is now in his tour client rental fleet with lower gears fitted to it. My own beater and touring bike was, fifty years ago, someone’s treasured and babied “best bike.” If it was raced, its years of treatment like a fine object ended at least three decades ago. Many other bikes are repainted, parted out and refitted for other riders, making provenance VERY difficult to prove. If Jan even got close he did an exceptional job of a difficult, needle-in-a-haystack task.This book would be a very enjoyable addition to any cyclist’s library.

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