Steel bikes have a ride quality that is unlike carbon fibre, aluminium or titanium. Italian bikes seem to carry an aura unlike others, particularly when they exude flair and panache through the details of the lug work and refrain from the pings, tings, and clumping sounds you hear when riding frames produced in other materials.
De Rosa brand bikes always fascinated me in the way a supercar parked in the street does, surveying that loud painted eye-catching brashly geometric Lamborghini Murcielago, you can’t help but not look, kind of not wanting to be seen looking at it, but also wanting to drop straight into the cockpit and know what’s lurking under that gregarious skin. And thus when this used De Rosa Neo Primato Italian Dedacciai Steel 55cm road bike appeared on the second hand market, it immediately sparked a deep curiosity and found its way into the quiver.
Neo Primato Background
In 1975 Ugo De Rosa designed and fabricated the bicycle which none other than The Cannibal, Eddy Merckx, the Belgian professional road and track bicycle racer, would ride in the 1975 Tour de France leading the Italian Molteni road bicycle racing team.
The fact that Molteni were Italian salami manufacturers from near Milan had nothing to do with the moniker Eddy had earned as the monster or cannibal of the Peloton. He in fact acquired the nickname when a teammate’s daughter suggested it after being told by her father of how Merckx just would not let anyone else win. Eddy’s some 525 victories over an eighteen-year career, including a record eleven Grand Tours (five Tours de France, five Giros d’Italia, and a Tour d’Espagne), would surely justify the sharpness of his cleavers.
It was only after his retirement that he began his own bicycle enterprise, producing bikes under Eddy Merckx Cycles. I was even fortunate to meet the grand tours cyclist excelsior at the Bicycling Australia Show in 2006, during his short visit to Melbourne to help promote his range of bicycles as well as attending the headline Jayco Herald Sun Tour professional road stage-race.
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