True!!!!

They still couldn't do it alone

I agree

Not just that, but on a block with only 5 gears on them.

@@kevinbuja8105 So true. I sincerely doubt any of the small climbers of today could even finish one mountain stage with a 42-23 drivetrain on a 20 pound steel bike.

3:24 lol

They look worse. Fist fights ad pushing

No worse than futbol fans, if we're being honest.

@@michaelstratton5223, I don’t know…yes football fans are unruly and boisterous hooligans, but some cycling fans are just exhibitionist assholes.

A pink suit at that!

@@rcdogmanduh4440 the leaders Jersey in the giro is pink. Like the yellow Jersey in the tour.

Hey, gotta look good while shouting.

3:43 it's all the exercise he gets once out of the office.

Everyone wore suits in those days.

Jason Hart haha now that’s funny 😄

Merckx was positive three times in his career.

Clean? Not by any standard of the concept.

Jason Hart 😉😂😂😂😂

Best doper of all time! Merckx the KING

@M I, sadly, doping wasn't new in Merckx's day and it isn't new now--been around forever.

Yes same

Non sempre

Yeah, at some point someone realized you can have more than 23 teeth in the rear

No the race is still really hard, they just have actual gears

0:53

The 1969 Tour de France was 600km longer overall than the 2019 tour ........so yes cyclists today are getting wrapped in cotton wool. As the decades have passed the Grand Tours have got shorter and shorter. The speed has gone up but that is not because todays riders are better , it's because they are riding shorter stages and a shorter race.

So speak the non-racers. The difficulty is not in the distance, the gradient or the gears; it's in the competition. When I meet someone who, for the first time, finds out that I race on bikes, their first question is inevitably, "what's the longest ride you've ever done?" Even after I've pointed out that my principal involvement is short(ish) road time trials they still don't ask, "what's your fastest average speed for a '10'?" or "what's your fastest time?". It is neither wise nor fair to try to compare the 'best' in one generation against the 'best' of a different generation. Let's just celebrate the endeavours of every rider, of every generation, who pushed back the boundaries of his/her own perceived limits, and achieved more than they had ever believed possible when they set out, whether that was higher, faster or further.

To be fair Eddy wrecked is run by going for another record at the same time. I can't remember the distance of the record though. This made him go to hard at the start.

To the detriment of the race, I think.

Same thing I was thinking. Today with super light machines, and that gears and it's still so hard. And the people! Chaos!

Tony G, 39x26 was a godsend.

A Good show of Italian testosterone in this vid, eh?

Men had naturally much higher testosterone levels back in those days.

Floyd Landis didn’t...

Don Novicki you can say that again!!!!

@@BuffaloBuffalo-uc6zp I'll say it once more!

Buffalo 66 Buffalo 6

Don Novicki, Masi Gran Criterium in 1971 cost me $275, Campy brakes $25

@@clu4u Don't forget if you didn't like the length of the stem you bought another bike so you could change it.

...so it became a 10min long middle section of Whole Lotta Love.

This clip needs the beats from Dirty Harry

39X23

The commentator should say "what a bloody waste of energy tossing about parts that don't make the pedals move". Nobody watch this and replicate it on a ride. Eddy or not, it is inefficient.

It can’t be helped. They didn’t have modern gear ratios, thus the rocking of exertion not inefficiency.

get on top of the gear in an intense cadence you can hold hold it as long as you can, learn a new plateau of pain turn the pain into a new intensity of desire to go faster repeat after recovery, however long that takes

Yep, my Rossin proudly had 170 cranks, 42/52 and a 12/21 six speed block.. Regina, if I recall.. Alfredo Binda clips and straps... That was 1975..

Names I was very familiar with. Had a Gios frame I built up. When Campy ruled, added finger tip shifters. The days of leather hairnet helmets. Best moment in a race I dropped Greg lemond and a few other top riders on a flat, hot, over 100F, super windy day. Would of won except my retarded team mates did not give me any drinks at last aid station. They all left so to watch end of the race! No speedometers, no power meters, no radios, no heart rate monitors, no aero, no carbon. The end of an era.

@@speedsac in your dreams you dropped lemond.

@@S2Sturges Hard core! I had a steel Olmo with similar set up!

@Firsthgyhgyhuy Lastujhujhuj yes they are.

Yeah and it took until 2010's to get barricades out for the slower mountain stages in tours so that we did not have a racer having to literally run a borrowed tour bike up the hill because the size of bike was not what he needed after his crash with a fan in which a known user of performance enhancing drugs Alberto Contador in his last year left his teammate out to dry and Alberto (also in wreak but bike was not damaged bad just fell slower then teammate) was not even in the top 10 at that point in the race and was not even in the top 10 in the stage. That was the tour De France

They're just italian

"One Flew Over the Cannibal's Nest"

I rode l'etape in '99 as well, on a 40lb Schwin kiddies tricycle with one wheel missing and a broken leg.....still managed 42mph over the whole stage!!! SMH

Real men don't have cartilage

#43 ha ha !!!!!

I presume reason #1 is "I just haven't got the legs for it."

Not necessarily, I saw a stage in the Tour of Colorado that was not shortened due to cold. They had the highest point on any tour race that year Just we never got to see the peak due to the high winds keeping most off the course and forcing the retirement of some of the lesser cyclist and teams.

And no power meters to spoil it all too.

42x52x 13-25 or 26 was the norm for gearing back then , Campagnolo wouldn't make a chainset with a smaller inner chainring ( even though Merckx asked them ) Campag was just about on every bike in those days. Stronglight was the French manufacturer that made cranks that could fit 36t chainrings on but they were seen as tourists gears.

If you were a real man, you used the biggest chainring possible. If one thing Armstrong did correctly was stay aerobic with a high cadence....and lots of doping, of course.

Today's cyclists consider that a flat terrain gear. Nuff said!

@@death2pc They also have cartilage in their knees lol

It looks like by their slow cadence

@@CulturalCats I still have mine as domany others........... And we still drop you ladies.

I was interested exactly in the crank and cassette numbers. What is the source of this information?

Sono italiano ed ero tifoso di Manuel Fuente grandissimo scalatore. Fuente ha sempre staccato Merckx in salita. Anche in Italia abbiamo avuto Pantani grandissimo scalatore staccava tutti in salita anche i più grandi. Chissà chi fra Fuente e Pantani avrebbe vinto in salita, secondo me sarebbero arrivati sempre appaiati al traguardo.

Lol, they were on (too) high gear in both their bikes and by themselves :)

Indeed. No beyond pathetic gay spinning. No lifeless plastic bikes and plastic equipment. Real bikes, real riders. And here's the disturbing part........... They were faster. Hello!

@@death2pc Really? I highly doubt that. I wasn't able to find any statistics for the "Giro d'Italia", but here's some for the Tour de France: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France_records_and_statistics#/media/File:Overall_Speed_Tour_de_France.gif

Firsthgyhgyhuy Lastujhujhuj yoga, it’s when you cite the truth. They show their true colors and spleen their loser's hate.

The pro's used 42x 25 or 26 in those days .

.en aquella época había mucha diferencia entre los desarrollos que movía un profesional y un cicloturista,entre los profesionales,subiendo estaba " mal visto" mover desarrollos muy pequeños.Hoy en día subiendo,mueven los mismos desarrollos un profesional y un cicloturista,solo cambia la cadencia

Ese era el furor de la carrera!!

Really if you are in top shape it really is not pain at all it is just effort and that has a pleasing side. I loved riding flat out. Just no talent so was not fast enough to win much. Training only takes you so far. Greg Lemond, then Armstrong so obvious case in point near no training and were fantastic on a bike. Years of training and you have top riders. We now have Remco just 19 yr old now to watch. More natural talent than anyone I have seen EVER. With LUCK he should dominate racing for many a year specially after he is a few years older 23 plus. He is as good as the very best second string riders who are 25 or so in age now.

***** Race wins and statistics don't lie.

Not to mention Merckx was all-terrain winner. Flat, valley, mountain... Well mountains a little bit less. It just points out the incredible efforts he imposed to himself to be a 'Tour winner'...

lemond was the greatest,

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