Racing Cyclocross in the 90's?

[AngryScientist]

As mentioned elsewhere I just picked up a sweet 1996 bianchi cx project frame.

Wondering how it would have been dressed in that year. What components were in vogue then?

Anyone have photos or know of galleries that showed off what CX bikes looked like in the second half of the 90's??

[christian]

That's not an actual cross bike, based on the eyelets. But honestly, late 1990s professional cross was pretty simple:

Dura-Ace 7402, or 7700 or Campy Record
Empella Frogglegs brakes mostly (some people ran XT cantis)
small outer ring (42-44)
33mm tubulars
Selle San Marco Concor (or other very light painful saddle) on a 27.2 alloy post
And some people ran Spinergies if you want to be very time-appropriate

[slowpoke]

Reposting m_sasso's Swiss Cross with da plexxxusssss

Originally Posted by m_sasso

Love my Ritchey, become one of my favorite bikes!

[christian]

Here's Adri Van Der Poel on (under?) his Rabobank Colnago. Dura-Ace 7700, XT brakes, Spinergies. He won the 1996 CX champs.

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by christian

That's not an actual cross bike, based on the eyelets.

Oh, it is. Martini Racing approved.

[christian]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

Oh, it is. Martini Racing approved.

Very cool. Fender eyelets is nice so you can use it for winter training too.

[echelon_john]

Let me know if you want some silver paul cantis, Nick!

[.RJ]

wow, where did you find that?

[gravelreformist]

Picture quality wasn't quite what it is today, but here's a few from that era when I was racing. Most of us were running 2x9 road setups in 50x38 with 11-27 rear. Brakes were always an issue. XT cantis didn't work great with STI pull ratios. The parts bins were raided for old-school touring Mafac brakes, with some new replicas made for those who could afford them. A few 1x setups but they didn't have the required gear range and didn't hold the chain reliably.

Everyone serious was on tubulars from Tufo/Challenge/Dugast.

Circa 1996 Vitus cross bike


Circa 1999 - note dual brake lever setup and (IIRC) Paul's brakes


2000 World Championships






Jonathan Sundt - Redline/Dale Knapp - Kona - ca. 1998


Our GT team issue. GT made a sort of last gasp before losing the plot completely. Honestly these frames were nothing special. Still have one in a mostly original state of build. The second one cracked.

[ColonelJLloyd]

Originally Posted by gravelreformist

Circa 1999 - note dual brake lever setup and (IIRC) Paul's brakes

Look to be MAFACs to me. Great photo.

[benb]

Originally Posted by gravelreformist

Picture quality wasn't quite what it is today, but here's a few from that era when I was racing. Most of us were running 2x9 road setups in 50x38 with 11-27 rear. Brakes were always an issue. XT cantis didn't work great with STI pull ratios. The parts bins were raided for old-school touring Mafac brakes, with some new replicas made for those who could afford them. A few 1x setups but they didn't have the required gear range and didn't hold the chain reliably.

This was the era I started riding in but never had a cross bike back in the day. I did have a fixed gear bike for a while in the early 2000s that had Cantis but it had no shifters, and the brake levers it had worked fine with the Cantis IIRC.

I am curious how this mess started with drop bar bikes with brake levers that didn't work with Cantis & Vs. It was still an issue in 2013 when I got my All City Space Horse, and from a modern perspective the bike industry didn't fix the issue till they switched everything to disc.

But Cross is old.. a heck of a lot older than integrated brake/shifters. Maybe there was no Cross in the US before integrated brake/shifters but is anyone here old enough to remember what came before? It is hard for me to believe there weren't decades of bikes that worked just fine. The first French Cyclocross National Championship was 1902 and the first Belgian National Championship was in 1910! Were there plain brake levers that worked with Cantis and other brakes that cleared big tires for a long time?

[mhespenheide]

Originally Posted by benb

Cross is old.. a heck of a lot older than integrated brake/shifters. Maybe there was no Cross in the US before integrated brake/shifters but is anyone here old enough to remember what came before?

Other people will remember and explain it better than me, but yes -- there are different types of brake levers. The TL;DR version is that there are "short pull" levers and "long pull levers". Even that explanation isn't complete, because once mountain bikes came on to the scene, the definitions of what constituted "short" and "long" got mixed up. But the word "pull ratio" in the earlier post is the key. Brake levers (the things your hands squeeze) and brake calipers (the things that squeeze the rims (or discs)) need to be matched or at least relatively matched to work well together. That's true even when you're working with "short pull" levers and cantilever brakes; some pairings will work better than others because the pull ratios are well-matched.

[EB]

My first proper bike in the 90s was a cross "conversion" and I remember things a bit differently - it was more of a "run what you brung" vibe, and existing frames were "converted" to cross by various means and methods, so long as they had sufficient tire clearance.

People also definitely rode mountain bikes in cross races, I don't think anyone knew or cared about UCI rules, though I could be wrong about this.

To that end, that bike I rode (mostly back and forth to college) was a black, heavy af Bianchi Volpe touring frame with red knobby tires - I don't remember the brand - and barcons. Pretty sure the tires were 28s. I didn't know any better so I loved that thing, and I didn't know how to adjust the cantilever brakes so they usually didn't work well at all.

Amusingly, Sheldon Brown has a page about the Volpe that describes it as a "kind of a faux cyclocross bike that evolved into a touring bike" but the way I remember it was as a touring bike that had been forced into service for 'cross.

[Pegoready]

Cyclocross from the 90's holds a dear place in my heart but was some of the worst equipment. I still shudder to think of all these things:

• Tall gearing, see that Bontrager review posted above that claims a 39x28 low gear is perfect for climbing dirt hills. I guess riders were stronger then...
• Barely functioning, squealy, wide profile canti brakes.
• Home brew 1x drivetrains with "crossing guards" sandwiching the front chainring. No clutched rear derailleurs, no narrow-wide rings.
• For 2x drivetrains, those seat tube pulleys that add a lot of friction and excess cable runs.
• Skinny tires. Skinny tire clearance. Expensive tubulars that disintegrated by looking at them.
• Short head tube, level top tube geometry, for shouldering and standover.
• Unhinged crosstop levers, or worse, re-purposing MTB levers and having frames modified with double cable stops.

Fun times.

If I were building a modern take on an old CX bike, I'd use Avid Shorty Ultimate brakes and a wide range true 1x group like SRAM Force 1x11, tubeless wheels, and the widest tire that gives you 5 mm of clearance to the inner chainstay face.

[November Dave]

Originally Posted by Pegoready

Cyclocross from the 90's holds a dear place in my heart but was some of the worst equipment. I still shudder to think of all these things:

• Tall gearing, see that Bontrager review posted above that claims a 39x28 low gear is perfect for climbing dirt hills. I guess riders were stronger then...
• Barely functioning, squealy, wide profile canti brakes.
• Home brew 1x drivetrains with "crossing guards" sandwiching the front chainring. No clutched rear derailleurs, no narrow-wide rings.
• Skinny tires. Skinny tire clearance. Expensive tubulars that disintegrated by looking at them.
• Short head tube, level top tube geometry, for shouldering and standover.
• Unhinged crosstop levers, or worse, re-purposing MTB levers and having frames modified with double cable stops.

Fun times.

If I were building a modern take on an old CX bike, I'd use Avid Shorty Ultimate brakes and a wide range true 1x group like SRAM Force 1x11, tubeless wheels, and the widest tire that gives you 5 mm of clearance to the inner chainstay face.

The days of wooden ships and iron men, huh?

I raced my first CX race in 2011 so I'm nowhere on the background some of you guys have, but I remember people dropping chains left and right on 1x setups back then. Fortunately Shorty Ultimates were very available by my time, and they worked ok. Carbon rims in the wet seemed to accelerate when you used the brakes, but otherwise they weren't awful.

When first sold frames, a lot of people were militant that cx bikes needed eyelets. Still don't really know why.

Was at a restaurant on Block Island last week and saw an ultra sweet Colnago from the Sven Nys era parked outside. That looked retro-riffic to me, but the photos on this thread are fantastic.