I became a Campafreak in the age of 14 as I started riding bikes competitively and got exposed to the world of cycling. My first bike had center pull brakes and cottered steel cranks and often during my training rides I wished to have Aluminum cranks and side pull brakes. Over time I bought from other riders used Campa (German short for Campagnolo equivalent to Campy) parts, build my first wheels and one day a dream became true as I completed my first full Campa bike in 1972. This was the start into a career as club tinkerer, putting chains on, gluing tires and truing wheels.
In these days there was more or less no innovation. So my arsenal was quite limited to rear wheels with 3 lace on drive side and radial lacing on non-drive-side,front wheels with 28/24 high gauge (gauge17/1.5mm) spokes, NISI rims and silk tires. In addition I started to reduce the weight of the Campy components by shaping off material from shifter and brake levers, cranks and stems. The esthetically appearance and how the craftsmanship has been carried out is what I more appreciated over simple weight reduction.
This was the point in time as I focused myself on the optimization of gear ratios depending on course and riders. This was quite limited due to the 6 speed sprockets and the 144mm BCD pattern of the Campagnolo crank spider, but it helped to obtain a little competitive advantage.
The monotone idyl got destroyed in 1973 as the Flandria Team with Freddy Martens and Walter Godefroot used components from a japanese company. This was quite a shock to me. They looked like copies of Campagnolo's Gran Sport group which was considered to be used on sport bikes and not for racing. Further investigations reveled some stunning details, the 130mm BCD which allowed the use of a 39 teeth chainring and the Crane rear derailleur. Nevertheless Walter Godefroot told me a couple of years ago that he prefered Campy over Shimano as a rider and for his Pro-Teams.
In 1987, as the C-Record Group was launched I asked myself if I should not convert to Shimano. The significant increase in weight and price made me considering this step.
The appearance of competition eased my life as a cyclist, because I took every opportunity of better technology and design.
Annoying for me was and still is that consumers often taken over the function of product reliability testers, especially in the days of the emerging mountain bike boom in the late 80-ties / early 90-ties.
Till today my cycling world is revolves around competitive riding, optimized components, pro riders and a spending a lot of time in the shop for machining and high end builds.
For more pictures please visit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/campafreak/
http://campafreak.blogspot.com/
http://velospace.org/user/16805