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After years of neglecting my dear old Olympia, I've ridden it about three hundred miles in the last month, including one century which left me wondering why I own any other bikes at all. Bought new in 1972 and ridden thousands of miles since, it feels like an extension of my body. I put about 25 miles on it yesterday. This morning I took out a 1981 Cinelli which is built up with a Campy Athena group from around 1990. I haven't ridden it much this year, and thought it would be interesting to do a back-to-back comparison, covering the same route I followed yesterday. Learned a few things:

The Athena brakes take less effort to slow the bike than the Records, which are more stiffly sprung. The Athena levers are chunkier and less pretty, but feel just as good as the Records. I still have an irrational fear of slipping off the hoods of brake levers with hidden cables, despite having used them on some bikes for many years and never having done so. The Record levers clack when you release them suddenly; the Athenas do not. The clack is loud enough to alert non-ear-budded pedestrians to my presence. When riding the Cinelli on a MUP, I missed having that feature, as I was foolish enough not to have fitted a bell before I left.

The Athena shifters are no improvement over NR/SR. They work well enough, but the rear needs considerable overshifting on upshifts. The levers are fine, though I can't get the indexed shifting to work well so I've locked it out. Campagnolo thoughtfully provides for this. I much prefer bar-end shifters, in any event. The front shifter has a better designed cage than the NR, in that it needs much less adjustment to keep it from rubbing the chain. It is more softly sprung, which makes downshifts less crisp under power (i.e. gotta back off more when downshifting) than the NR front.

The Cinelli has Schwalbe Montello tires. At 22mm, they are narrower than the Challenge Parigi-Roubaixs on the Olympia. I ran both bikes at 95psi. The Schwalbes are nearly as comfortable as the P-Rs at that pressure. They turn in better as well. But I would never use them on gravel or dirt, while the P-Rs are fine off-road.

Vanity got me to buy an eggplant-colored Brooks Colt to go with the lug lining on the Cinelli. It isn't nearly as comfortable as the Brooks Pro on the Olympia.

So ultimately this isn't a comparison of two frames. The frames are very nearly identical: top tube & chain stay length are the same, as are the fork rake, head & seat tube angles and wheelbase. If they were identically equipped, I doubt I could tell the frames apart by riding them. They both ride arrow-straight no-hands, are tight without being harsh, feel good on ascents and descents and make me feel good riding them.

aside from that Colt saddle, those are two very handsome bikes. I think the Olympia deserves a little more clean'n'polish...not so much that you remove the patina, but it looks neglected next to the Cinelli.

Aixaix already knows this as we have spoken about it before. My first quality racing bike in the 70's was an Olympia. I bought it with my newspaper route money and after I bought it got a good talking to from my dad who thought it was far too extravagant. Since it was all my money in the end he let it slide. I started racing on it as a junior. I thought it was the best bike ever (but given I was moving up from a Peugeot with steel rims, I guess almost anything was a step up). Two year later I was able to get a Colnago at wholesale and sold the Olympia to be able to cover a good chunk of the cost of the Colnago. What a total disappointment! I think the Olympia was better in every way. I sold the Colnago after one season and had my first custom Marinoni built. The Marinoni was a better fit but otherwise didn't surpass my memory of the Olympia. I would love to have that first Olympia back but the fellow who bought it from me left for university and I never heard of him or the bike again...

How funny: after very few rides since building up my Olympia a couple years ago, I rode it on its first century this month, too

In comparison to my old '83 Cinelli Super Corsa, the Olympia is lighter by far, and the geometry of mine is somewhat slacker, therefore was a very nice ride for the 105 miles. I did STP on the Cinelli and between the two I much prefer the Olympia. Its only flaw is that the BB is fairly flexible, and this may be that it was raced hard in its previous lifetime. It's one of the lightest frames I own.

DD

Could be because the Cinelli has been re-painted?

Interesting comparison and report Aixaix.
Goes to show you can't teach a new dog old tricks ....er...sumthing.

Yeah, any of you guys who like something else over your pre-sale 57-59cm Cinellis, I'll take it off your hands. Seriously. I've owned a couple of 70's Cinellis and even though selling them was something that I needed to do because life got in the way, I would love to own one again.

Pete

He's just trying to pump value into his Olympias

They really are beautiful bikes...if the right one came along at the right price, I'd probably try it out.

I don't have any to pump value into anymore... In fact, I would prefer that their price stay low ;-)

The Olympia could use a bath. I rode it in a downpour the weekend before last and haven't washed it since. Also, it is the bike I've put more miles on than all my others combined. The finish is rough, but pretty much every blemish is my doing which makes it me not want to repaint it.
I'm not crazy about the Colt either.
It isn't a repaint, as CdM will attest. When I bought the frame it had never been painted. It was built for a bike show at the NY Coliseum around 1981, to demonstrate a frame jig that Columbus was selling. Columbus had just bought Cinelli, and the frame was made by one of Cinelli's frame builders. (He might have built it at the show in NY. This is an unconfirmed and unlikely rumor which, if true, would make this the only Cinelli built in the USA). Proteus bought the jig and was given the unpainted frame. They never did anything with it, other than move it from place to place in the shop. Eventually it got sold to a vendor who sold it to me. The paint it wears is the only paint it has ever had, thus not a repaint.

Uh, oh...that's right. You told me that once Aixaix. Geeze , my memory stinketh.
Shall I rephrase that to say "freshly painted" ?

I should have bought that bike when I had the chance...I just really wanted eyelets.

It has eyelets, Aaron.

I don't remember what held me back in that case; it was certainly a beauty. I remember thinking about it...I remember deciding it wasn't quite right.

Divine intervention stayed your hand.
Actually, I think it was that it had a generic chrome Columbus fork for a short time while the original one was getting finished.

Que sera, Serotta, as we say in the bike trade.

Are you considering selling it?

I really like your Olympia! Some wonderful frame details. It would make a nice resto project. I'm not heavy on patina, or "it's only original once". But that's me. It's a bike, not a painting.
It's obvious a rider, and as you've stated, a wonderful ride. I think it would be nice to restore it to its former glory. I think it would be as lovely as your Cinelli.

That rainstorm, to which aixaix alluded, was my fault but it was otherwise a good day for a ride. I've now seen both of aixaix's Olympias and they are both beautiful though perhaps in different ways. They make me lustful.

Ah, dear sir, you've seen but two of six, not counting the CF flyweight (14 lb, I'm told) leaning against my office wall that a friend lent me thinking I needed a boost into the 21st century.
And the rain made the ride more bracing. No need to apologize.

Yeah, as I wrote that and the words "track bike" flashed before my mind's eye, I knew I was missing something! I meant to go back and obfuscate my wording but impatience got the better of me.

And you did not want black, silver, laser blue or Metallic rose...?

Nope.

This thing is such an oddball that I figured anything I did to it should be dictated by my taste rather than how Cinelli would have finished it at the time. The frame is definitely late enough to have the post-Columbus winged "C" logotype. I don't like those graphics at all, so I decaled & badged it from the earlier, elegant era. I called it a Model "B" because of the fork crown.
The color doesn't reproduce well in photos. It is cream with a very delicate and subtle glitter. The lug lining is maroon. I thought briefly of having the tips and lugs chromed, but decided not to because of the cost and the amount of work preparing the lugs to look perfect: chrome is a finish which magnifies every flaw underneath it.
I was able to find a new-in-the-box 1991 bike with an unused Athena group. I bought just the group and used it on this frame because it is as pretty as any post- NR/SR era group as Campy made: cheaper than C-Record, with more sculptural brake calipers and a rear derailleur that doesn't break but still incorporates spats on the jockey roller. (I have a set of Deltas, but I cannot bring myself to mount them. How anything so carefully designed and nicely finished can look so clunky on a bicycle is something I'm still trying to figure out. I really want to like them but I really, really don't.) The wheels are NR high flange hubs and Ukai plastic-filled tubular rims. I have no idea where they came from, but they are very light and straight. (The Athena hubs were laced to clincher rims and now grace my tandem, where they replaced the original 48-spoke Phil-hubbed 27" monsters that are way overbuilt for my small wife and I.)
The bike's a lot prettier than I am. Still waiting for it to rub off on me.