I finally got around to taking some pictures of my newest addition today. This one has been a long time coming and I’ve waited a couple of years to find a De Rosa Pista in the right size, in good condition and within my budget. This one came up on German ebay a few months back and naturally I snapped it up.
It’s a 1984 De Rosa Pista built with Columbus SP tubing. From my limited research it seems that SP tubing was up next to SL at the top of Columbus’ tubesets in the day, but has a larger wall thickness. It was recommended for larger standard size frames, and was best suited to heavy riders for track events or road races on uneven surfaces.
The frame is stamped with the serial number #10, and is painted in the Sammontana team colour scheme.
Moreno Argentin (born 17/12/60) was Italian national champion in 1983 and 1989, and world champion in 1986.
I spoke to Cristiano De Rosa about the frame and he told me that they produced a very limited number of these frames, and that they were numbered sequentially.
This has become my new track bike and gets a ride every Tuesday at Chandler velodrome (when it’s not raining). It came with a set of Campagnolo pista cranks but they are the older 151BCD ones and I don’t need another collection of chainrings so decided to put a spare set of Dura-Ace NJS cranks on there.
The Panto stem came with the bike as did the bars, saddle, fluted seatpost and Hatta Swan headset. I took the wheels off my old track bike which are Suzue NJS hubs laced to Velocity Aeroheads with Veloflex Record 22s.
That pantoed stem is something special!
Speaking of De Rosa’s I dodged one in Brisbane on Merivale road at midday today while carrying my track bike to the station.
Guy was on a blue De Rosa road bike with a similar colour scheme, looked the goods.
Bit hard to tell but I’m wondering if this is one of the frames that a mate of mine found a few years back and had a chat to Ugo de Rosa about. Yours is too big to be Argentin’s (he rode a 53cm road frame) and my memory is a little vague but I recall that he bought the bikes from Raniero Gradi who was a team mate of Argentin’s at Sammontana in 1983 and 1984. Commonly road riders did some track riding during that time (to earn some extra $'s). There’s a chance yours could be one of Gradi’s.
Anyway, here’s the pics. I thought it was cool that my mate shared ciggie’s with Ugo who chain smokes and loves talking about bikes/riders from back in the day. My mate hates smoking/cigarette’s but who was he to say no to God at his altar.
I like this bike.
Fuck, yellow looks good on bikes. Like on the old Gitane Proffessionnel roadies and that, blue and yellow.
But yeeeeeah boy, some rizors and that shit’d be the best street machine kickin
There is so much win in that Sammontana picture, get some yellow Benotto Cello bar tape and then we’ll talk.
