As many of you know, I know Ernesto and all of his family; as well as most of the other longtime Italian boutique framebuilders and their families. While I have incredible respect for Ernesto and his products, there are certain aspects of his "history" that leave me cold and I am somewhat surprised of how he decides to present himself. What you need to understand is that most of these people come from another time period and have not necessarily stayed up to date with the changing ways of business, even if their businesses are still very cutting edge when it comes to frame design and technology. Colnago is deserving of recognition and respect, however in a way that is different than what one should accord to other "luminaries" of frame-building.

Colnago's comments do hold a degree of truth insofar as he was indeed the first to introduce many new ideas to the pro peloton. This idea of supplying "the bikes of the pro peloton" is very important to Ernesto and just like in the case of his idol, Enzo Ferrari, is the only "market" that is truly important and worthy to Ernesto. So if you consider his comments when relating only to this very specific "market" you can see that much of what he says is very much true. There were obviously many many bikes with straight blade forks, dating even 100 years prior to the Precisa fork, but it was only with Colnago's introduction of the fork to the pro peloton that it is became acceptable for use by pros. The same goes for full custom builds for every member of a team, all ostensibly being made by a single frame-builder or frame-building unit. When Colnago first got involved most team bikes for the top riders were custom built, but very rarely were they in any way representative of what Joe Public could buy, as they were often built by third party framebuilders who had no ties to the manufacture of standard production bikes. Then the lesser riders usually rode stock frames of a noticeably lesser quality. In this way, Colnago was indeed the first to provide Joe Public with frames that were indeed largely identical to the pros bikes. The same goes for titanium frames. Prior to Colnago supplying them to the pros, there were a few individual titanium frames that were used by specific "top-name" riders who generally had the titanium frames disguised as a steel frame, but there was no whole team that used them. The first complete team to ride exclusively on titanium frames was indeed colnago-sponsored. In this way, he was the first to bring them out. Likewise his first carbon fiber bikes also came out when the idea was still in its infancy and he never did look back. There were others that came out with a bike here or there but long-term none of them has remained as successful as Colnago and most who are still involved have not made as linear progress as has Colnago. You can see where many manufacturers have tried new ideas only to abandon them after a short period and then start up with another idea...

To balance my boosterism and support for Colnago with some constructive criticism, I believe that people should be aware that Colnago is like Alberto and Faliero Masi, Alfredo Gios, the Colombo-managed Cinelli and many many other old-timers who are all somewhat free with their recounting of details of history and I honestly believe that they have all been telling the same stories for so long that they have often come to believe them to be the whole truth. This has to do with a degree of mysticism that I feel has long been incorrectly awarded to certain frame-building "idols". Buyers, especially those in North America, built up myths around many of these builders and wanted to believe that they possessed some mystical powers. These people were simply happy to take on the mantle that others had awarded to them.