Italy's 7-time world champion sprinter Antonio Maspes was a rider who demanded a lot from the equipment that he used. In this rare photo he can be seen riding one of Faliero Masi's Special Pista. Circa late 50's.

November 4, 1940: The famous pair line up for a match in which Fausto would win, just as he had won against 30 prior challenges.

Rotterdam, 1973: Merckx holds off an attack by Netherlands' Piet De Wit.

This is a page scanned from an old Reg Harris scrapbook assembled by a fan in the UK. Over his career, Reg would end up breaking the 1000-metre record a total of 5 times. These photos are from his first attempt.

November 7th, 1942. Fausto Coppi rounds the bank at the Velodromo Vigorelli aboard his Legnano (there are some rumors it was built by Faliero Masi) for a successful attack on the hour record distance. At the end, he would set the new standard at 45.798km.




Below is a sampling of the lap times of interest:

1 km	01:17
2 km	02:36
3 km	03:53
4 km	05:12
5 km	06:30
10 km	13:02
15 km	19:35
20 km	26:08
Half Hour Mark	22.946km
25 km	32:41
30 km	39:14
35 km	45:47
40 km	52:19
45 km	58:51
Hour Mark	45.871 km, later corrected to 45.798 km

Two-for-one deal with today's POTD entry. Here's the one and only Eddy Merckx during his triumphant attempt at breaking the hour record distance (by riding 49.431 km in an hour).

Although adorned with Windsor stickers at the time, the actual bike used during the record is now well-known to be a highly custom Colnago Pista equipped with various parts of magnesium and titanium that were provided by Pino Morroni.

I've been having some Masi discussions offline today with a couple of folks so thought it'd throw in another Masi Pista photo. This is once again Jacques Anquetil but in this photo he's aboard a Faliero Masi track bike (despite his Helyette sponsorship) on a successful attempt at breaking the hour record in 1956.



Faliero must have been rather proud of this achievement and in a pleasant surprise, I found a Beriano / Masi ad inside a track program from Reg Harris' last race (when he retired in '57) that alludes to Anquetil's use of a Masi.

In this rare photo a young Eddy Merckx is seen aboard what looks to be a Masi Pista with the faux twin-plate fork.

In his 1974 comeback, Reg Harris ("The Maestro") is temporarily behind Trevor Bull as they head down the back straight on the second ride of the British pro sprint championship final. Reg then makes the jump he is so famously known for and overtakes Trevor to win the title.

An interesting note about this photo is that the RRA bike Reg is riding had to be "reconstructed" since Reg had given away all or sold all of his RRA machines when he retired. The reason he chose to ride the "vintage" racer was not for nostalgia but rather that he felt its longer chainstays would hold the line better on the rough surface of the track. Anyways, the bars and stem had to be borrowed back from a friend as Reg insisted on using one of his custom made Raleigh setups (the stem's bar clamp is machined from a solid block of chrome-moly alloy). Such a stem was also used on my Masi Pista that was made for Reg, and is seen below.

In 1993 Lance Armstrong was on his way to winning his first stage at the Tour de France at the age of 22. In this photo he demonstrates his aerodynamic position while riding out of the drops.

His toughest competitor was prejudice. He's seen here aboard his Iver Johnson bike for his first European meet (in Berlin).

Back when men were men, spare tubulars were efficiently wrapped around the body during races.



( I wish I had cycling hair like that!)

Here's an old action photo from the 50's that I really enjoy as I can relate to these types of "stunts". This is Mario Pietrucci's winning run in Italy's "Ara Coeli" steps race (in which some competitors were said to have met with mishaps). Check out the cool protective dome on his head!




And here I am attempting a modern-day imitation on my cyclocross bike...

Jose Meiffret was a daring Frenchman who pursued breaking the barrier of 200km per hour (124MPH) on a bicycle. Although he succeeded in 1962, he was hampered in prior attempts due to there not being a vehicle capable of such speeds with a large wind shield attached. This 1951 photo shows the custom 130-tooth chainring used on the bike for his 109MPH run (which was a record at that time).

Cycling's hour record is a fascinating endeavor to me, and by extension - the bikes and equipment used. For whatever reason, Frenchman Jacques Anquetil rode Italian-built bikes for his hour record runs rather than products from his native France. For his first (and successful) attempt at breaking the hour record, he rode a frameset built by Faliero Masi.

When Anquetil again made an attempt at the hour record in 1967, he commissioned Pinella De Grandi of Bianchi to build his frameset. In this 1967 photo, the "Jacques Anquetil" bike can be seen exhibiting many traits characteristic of Bianchis.

Coppi, the trackman. His smooth, powerful action carried him to a world's title in 1949, but not the title he so much desired. Coppi is essentially a road man, despite his amazing unpaced track riding, and his unfulfilled ambition is to become professional road champion of the world. In 1949 he almost succeeded, but his attempts to escape the attention of his "shadowers" were doomed to fail.

In the pursuit championship, Coppi made light work of the opposition and had little apparent difficulty in winning the title.

To keep things interesting I'm going to make an attempt at featuring a "Picture of the Day" post daily. The photos will tend to be historically interesting, although that isn't necessarily a requirement. For anyone else who wants to contribute, just send an email to the list and include the tag "[potd]" (without the quotes) at the beginning of the subject line. That will put the post into the right category on the site archives.

The first image for this feature is something I like to call "Darth Eddy" and is of Eddy Merckx with a breathing apparatus attached. It's not talked about much, but Eddy's preparation for the Hour Record attempt in Mexico seems to have been quite extensive, including low-oxygen training as seen here.