Do you ever stay up at night wondering about the evolution of the modern bike drive train? Was it Campag or Shimano that cracked the code. Read on.
Simplex founder Lucien Juy was nothing if not persistent. In 1928, the bike shop owner showed a rudimentary single-pulley derailleur he had invented to the manager of the Alcyon team and convinced him to outfit the team’s bikes with them for that year’s Paris-Roubaix. The riders had other ideas. They refused to tackle the cobbles on unproven equipment and removed the derailleurs before the start.
But Juy pressed on, through an economic depression and World War II. Finally, in 1949, he hit the big time when Fausto Coppi won the Tour de France with a Simplex derailleur…Continue […]
Hope you find this as interesting as I did…
Cheers Kev
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