Yup. I remember seeing a photo of him and the team he was on all on bikes, he was the only one with a friction downtube front shifter. But when you think about it, with a double crank, there is no reason to index, the lever is all the way forward or all the way back.

I hated rear friction shifting, once I discovered index shifting for the rear there was no going back. But the front, half of my shifts are to the middle ring, that is the only lever position that I had to train my hand and wrist to shift to that was not all the way to the stop. So, I do not mind friction front shifting with a triple.