Comments on: Vive Le Tour (1962)

By: DJ

DJ — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:05:27 +0000

extremely nice film! The jerseys…sooo cool. Too bad you apparently have to have 10 or more sponsors to keep your team on the road these days…
http://www.diquigiovanniandroni.com/corridori.html

By: Ted

Ted — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:24:53 +0000

I read on rec.bicycles.racing that this documentary was by famed director Louis Malle: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056662/

By: roomservicetaco

roomservicetaco — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:10:36 +0000

Didn’t gear selection for climbing also have to do with the fact that downtube shifters made it very difficult to shift while climbing? I always thought you’d have to be in a gear that was slightly ‘too big” for sitting and slightly ‘too small’ for standing.

By: hek

hek — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:04:42 +0000

Thanks, Sebastian!

By: David Lewis

David Lewis — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:59:42 +0000

Yep, kudos on the vids. Very, very cool.

In the first video … there is a quick shot … and I’d swear it was a Sean Kelly clone. Now to find it again.

By: cosmo

cosmo — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:33:11 +0000

Awesome find, Sebastian.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:31:12 +0000

Hek: According to French Wikipedia, #20 in the 1962 Tour was the Italian, Guiseppe Zorzi. (fr.wikipedia.org is a great resource for these sorts of questions, since it has a complete start list for almost every post-WWII Tour.)

By: hek

hek — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:19:24 +0000

Does anyone know who the rider is who falls off his bike (number 20)? Or who is the guy being airlifted with the cracked skull? Thanks for posting this! Amazing how different the race looks.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:19:29 +0000

I picked wrong week to downgrade my Internet connection speed. 160MB of flash video at 1Mbps requires patience. And yeah, I had to watch in high quality. Downloading ~26MB of a Windows Update at the same time didn’t help. Thx for posting.

Re gearing: When I raced as a junior (with a gear restriction of about 52×15), we had only 6 cogs in back (~1990), we had a sufficient range of gearing but lacked the one-tooth increments I enjoy today. Chainrings were almost always 42/52.

By: tourpro

tourpro — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:38:12 +0000

At a certain point, the triple crank would make sense, but definitely there would be some “Granny” jokes.

I think gear-selection is pretty much a non-factor these days w/ 10-speed. Back when you only had 5-6 in the back made choosing the right cogs essential. It was always more manly to run the “corn cob” in the back. Merckx was riding a 5-speed right?

I wonder what the performance improvement modern 10-speed drives add?