Vintage Velo

Cleats

“The other day, I was talking to an old friend of mine,” said Mike Barry Sr. of some reminiscing he had done recently. “There were things like nailing your shoe plates on that use to be part of serious bike riding. You had to get the cleat in the right spot. You had to get it so it wasn’t angled. Doing all that made you part of a secret society, if you know what I mean?”

Barry had a bunch of cleats out and even a pair of leather shoes that his son Michael used when he was young. Cleats in Barry Sr.’s collection include many by French company Spécialités T.A., such as the Jacques Anquetil Piste model, the Cyclocross model with its long spikes and the red Calrouge. The cleats Barry used the most bore the name of Camille Foucaux, a multiple cyclocross champion from France during the late 1920s and early ’30s. Barry also has some Foucaux marketing, a paper that states the cleats were used in many events such as the Tour de France, Paris-roubaix, Paris-tours and the world championships.

Foucaux also made a cyclocross cleat with spikes that had to be long and sharp. Each of these cleats has a groove that mates with the back plate of a pedal. Because the spikes couldn’t pass over the pedal plate, they sat near the ball of the foot, in contrast to today’s spikes near the toes. Since the old spikes were so far back, they needed to be long to dig into the ground as you ran. Barry remembered running up steep inclines with toes pointed outward – almost like a cross-country skier using the herringbone technique – to get better traction.

“In cyclocross, you’d leave your straps a bit loose to be able to get your foot out,” he said. “If you were racing, or riding seriously, you’d tighten your straps up. You’d never get your foot out. To undo it, you’d just flick part of the strap and it comes undone.”

“It’s a lost art,” Barry added.— MP