Cycling in the 1980's
 

The other thread about the '80s cycling website got me to thinking... :rolleyes:

The decade from 1980 to 1989 was quite monumental for the average road / race cyclist. At the beginning of the decade, almost all road bikes were made from steel. By the end of the decade, aluminum was all the rage, and carbon was being considered.

In 1980, the average racer would probably not consider Suntour or Shimano components, but by the end of the decade, due to phenomenal improvements, Shimano had overtake Suntour for market share, and was regularly seen in the pro peloton. Campagnolo had lost quite a chunk of business to the two Japanese giants.

Cycling specific clothing was (by & large) still made of wool in 1980, but had turned to synthetics by the end of the decade, and it appeared that wool was going the way of the dinosaur. While the "wool jersey" era had wonderful colors, they were quite a bit more conservative compared to what we saw at the end of the decade.

In 1980, brake cables came out of the tops of the hoods. By 1989, you seldom saw this, as the cables were now concealed by the handlebar tape, and in quite a few bikes, the brake cable going to the rear brake was routed inside the top tube... something you did not see very often prior to 1980.

In 1980:
It was friction shifting
5 or maybe 6 gears on a freewheel that screwed on to the rear hub
36 or 32 spokes on most sporty/race bikes. 28 on serious race bikes
22 pounds was considered pretty light
Tires had tread
Pedals had toe clips and straps (virtually gone by '89)



Granted, this is mostly generalizations, and there were exceptions to just about every point, and I'm sure that there are more things that I'm not thinking of at the moment...

Feel free to add or comment!

I would say that the 70s saw more of Shimano and Suntour taking over the derailleur scene. The 80s saw the beginning of the end of Suntour, of Simplex, and Huret, and the emerging dominance of Shimano in everything.

Also the American bicycle manufacturers were all basically living on borrowed time by 1980.

Other things - centerpulls were disappearing fast, same for steel wheels (even on entry level bikes), oh and the 27" wheelsize, was still very common in 1980, but only appeared the cheapest stuff by 1990.

And let's not forget the Mountain Bike, and BMX.....

EDIT: oh yeah! I almost forgot about the emergence of those wonder materials: Lycra and Spandex.
Till the mid 80s, most people were still using wool shorts - can you imagine?

Welcome to why Classic Rendezvous uses 1983 as their absolute cutoff year. They consider 1984 as The Year That Everything Changed. To a certain extent, they were right. In 1983 pedals still used clips and straps, shift levers didn't click (ignore SunTour rachet, it was still friction), and Tullio Campagnolo was still breathing and turning out the classic designs.

In 1984 . . . . . . .

Granted, that cutoff was not absolute. I remember a line called Cool Gear for jerseys in 1973 that was radical in that it used 100% nylon (I still have one with my 73-75 TOSRV patches in the closet). But the shorts were still wool. And some guy had invented brifters (friction!) in the mid-70's but they never got marketed. But yeah, in my first incarnation as a cyclists (1969-1977) the biggest technological change was the SunTour rear derailleur. Period. By the time I dropped out of the sport, I still hadn't seen a 6-speed freewheel, only 5's.

Helmets. The white Bell with the red stripe and the leather/vinyl inverted jock strap gave way to a boatload of other types.

Manufacturers. Sure, the US makers were living on borrowed time, then, some fellows in Wisconsin, I think, came up with a company that gained some traction, ....Trek, was it?
a subnote on that was the global financial markets circling warily like animals ready to fight. The yen vs. the dollar had a huge impact for a while....

Sport expansion. The sport of triathlons brought people into bike shops who never considered riding all that seriously before. Mountain biking, BMX, and trick bikes. Bike lanes.

On the bike: steel to chro-mo to Al and carbon / 700c / indexing / aero levers and riding positions / the freehub / QR

Attire: the end of the short athletic shorts. Good or bad, depending on what you were looking at, so to speak.

And the Americans started appearing on the international racing scene. 1980 - not even an afterthought, never even had a TdF rider. By the end, we had a Giro winner and a multi WC and TdF winner. Just the start of things to come.

My first road bike (1982-83) was a steel Nishiki Competition that was fitted out with a 12 speed drive (wow) and a full Suntour Cyclone group... the Professional model was Campy equipped and even then I thought the Suntour gear was probably the better of the two groups.

The sun was about to set for Campy and Suntour was nearly at it's zenith as no-one has ever made better friction shifters and their patents on the slant parallelogram derailer were still in place... Shimano's star was about to make it's meteoric rise.

In Canada the bike cost me nearly $1000.00 as the yen was very strong in comparison to our rather weak dollar... toe straps were the order of the day, as were drillium chain rings, 36 spoke wheels, and no-one had thought of brifters.

Nowadays folks cannot imagine pulling down a sub hour 40 on such a "tank".

Suntour still had more gas in the tank as they brought out their Superbe groups which are considered to be the finest friction shifters ever made... but I still prefer the early Cyclone from an aesthetic point of view and the cyclone groups were among the lightest derailers ever made.

Shimano still can't make a derailer any lighter as a Mk1 Cyclone and they invented indexed shifting but never exploited this technology as Shimano did... Shimano just needed Suntours patents to expire and Campy was also able to exploit this design and begin to reclaim their market share.

I missed the entire BMX thing... I was out on the road laying down the miles when my friends were playing in the dirt and on the sidewalk.

There were not a lot of serious cyclists where I lived and things were also far more car centric everywhere... the movement to riding more and driving less had just begun and it is amazing to see how far we have come.

And our dollar is just about trading at par with the US now.

:)

Ditto

What I remember about Shimano in the 70s was Campy clones for 1/3 the price...

The 80's was a sort of renaissance/golden years for cycling as it really went international, specially when stronger American teams and individual cyclists got noticed. It's almost sad that most cyclist these days don't even know such modern pioneers like Jonathan "Jaques" Boyer who started really challenging the traditional favorites from Europe in the very early 80's which then released more inspired efforts from then "young guns" like Greg LeMond and then the exciting 7-Eleven team. Davis Phinney, Connie Carpenter, Brent Emery, the Heidens and the individual efforts from now also almost forgotten cyclists like Alexi Grewal that led all these riders into the Olympics which futher exposed the US public and the world the cycling in the international level. I have to also say that it may have been the drive from the American teams and bike manufacturers that pushed the technology to the modern times. Although a lot of the technology was formulated in Europe, as with Look and their clipless pedals, I think the competition in the industry and the sport accelerated this (we were pretty much stuck in Reynolds 531 world before the 80's). which American cyclists were a big factor in. I still remember seeing all sorts of cycling components and accessories continually going obsolete and ending up in clearance bins becuse something new had just replaced it that's totally , radically different and better.
Cycling did turn into a sort of fadish sport (as downhill sking had been since I can remember)with equipment really dominating the discussion sometimes overtaking the athletes. but we are where we are right now becuase of the push from the 80's. Otherwise we might still be riding with toe clips, loose bearing everything, only steel frames and maybe even only 12 speeds.
I also remember the long distance cross country races between Lon Haldeman, Pete Penseyres and John Howard also adding icing to the excitement of those times. Also Howards land speed record rides.
Riders from other countries were also known to more cyclists here, as many fans of Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, Phil Anderson, Eric Vanderaerden, The fantastic climbing Colombians of that time....I guess I can go on and and, but unless you lived those times I think it's kinda hard to realize how significant that time was for the sport of cycling.
JMOs

Chombi

Helmets! Ah, yes. We went from leather hairnets, to Styrofoam with some sort of protective shell over it. I'd forgotten that!

As for the Japanese derailleur "insurgency", I'd say the '70s saw their rising, but it was the '80s when they came to dominance.

Speaking of BMX, when I was a lad, growing up in California, WAY before the term "BMX" came into existence, me & my friends took our Stingrays, and stripped of the banana seat and sissy bar, installe what we called "a 10 speed bike seat", knobby tires, and then took some actual motocross motorcycle handlebars (with the cross member) and made them fit. We called it a "motocross bicycle". I can't remember where we got the idea to do so, or why we decided to do it, but nobody else had them that we ever saw. This would have been about 1973~4.

Then we turned 15 and got driving permits, followed by actual licenses and the bikes faded from our lives at a rapid pace. It wasn't until the early '80s that I remember hearing the term "BMX" and then saw what a BMX bike was, and I was like, "Ha! We were doing that when we were kids..."

Just a side note in my life... sorry

Alexi Grewal. No "s". Man, I admired him. Until he became a dick...

Remember Styrofoam helmet with a lycra shower cap type a thing on top (no protective shell)? Those were hott!

In 1980, although market share had slipped, Schwinn was still the "king" the most powerful bicycle manufacturer. By the end of the decade, they had avoided bankruptcy once, and where begging bike shops to carry their product.

I don't think we've spent enough time on the Mountain Bike. In 1980, this was still a sport of almost all converted bikes intended for other purposes and it was centralized in California. By the end of the decade, the once "boss of the showroom" the road bike, had to share showroom space with the more rugged, but less glamorous mountain bike. All major manufacturers had a line of mountain bikes by the end of 1989 and mountain biking had spread throughout the US and Canada, making its path worldwide.
IMHO, the changes to road bikes pale in comparison to the changes in mountain biking.

Ah yes, the 80's, the lost decade. Alas I got my driver's license in '77 and my first car in '78 so by 1980 my bike was collecting dust in the corner. Then I joined the army. Didn't give bikes a thought again until I got out in 1990, dusted my old bike off and started riding again. I was not pleased at what I found had happened inbtween so I guess it was then that I became a retro grouch...er, C&V'er. ;)

The Time Warp Lyrics

It's astounding, time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely, not for very much longer
I've got to keep control

I remember doing the TIme Warp
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me and the void would be calling
Let's do the time warp again...
Let's do the time warp again!

It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
With your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane,
Let's do the Time Warp again!

It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me
So you can't see me, no not at all
In another dimension, with voyeuristic intention
Well-secluded, I see all
With a bit of a mind flip
You're there in the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same
You're spaced out on sensation, like you're under sedation
Let's do the Time Warp again!

Well I was walking down the street just a-having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink
He shook me up, he took me by surprise
He had a pickup truck and the devil's eyes.
He stared at me and I felt a change
Time meant nothing, never would again
Let's do the Time Warp again!

This is my story to the letter...even the army part!! It was a little later than 1990 before I got back into it though...like two decades. :o

Whew frpax, that time warp vid triggered an acid flashback. :twitchy: (goes to lay down)

With me, it was first motorcycle in '76, first real motorcycle (350cc) in '77, by '78 the bicycles were gone. I lost touch with the '80's, '90's and first half of the '00's. Never heard of Greg LeMond until I walked into Agee's in October '05 and saw a line of bike with the name on the downtube. My total immersion into cycling in those 28 years was the July mentions of Lance Armstrong on the sports page - after the baseball scores.

Talk about Rip van Winkle.

Tell me about it - from non-existent (commercially) to ruling the sales charts in less than a decade. And if you want to see the real beginnings of BMX, watch On Any Sunday. I remember doing that to my home made stingray (but with the apehangers still on) back in the mid 60's.

Nothing changed for me, except that my favorite Avocet Touring shoes were discontinued and helmet, tire, and brake pad technology improved significantly. OK, I did go from 3x5 gearing to 2x6 and 2x7 on the road bikes.

Trek and Cannondale would beg to differ :)

I still have one of those in the basement. Maybe I'll wear it on the next retro-ride.

Be careful, it may earn you a visit from The Hat.....

Wow! That's how I remember it but I was a bit more involved with the Ultramarathon end of it. Who needs sleep.