Officina Battaglin 1987
A stunning replica of Stephen Roche’s World Championship-winning bike
Ican’t seem to escape retro steel at the moment. Last month we tested three modern-vintage steel racers on the hills of Tuscany, and this month I’ve been tasked with reviewing this, the Officina Battaglin 1987. But if that sounds like I’m complaining, I’m really not.
I’m no purist, but I feel there are fewer more beautiful bicycle forms than the skinny, round-tubed racer, and though only a sensorially bereft ingrate would argue that bicycle technology isn’t better today than 30 years ago, that old technology still stirs something in me that all the carbon in China just can’t. Plus, those retro bikes are a huge amount of fun to ride, and this replica model from Battaglin is no exception.
True steel
Battaglin (pronounced bat-aye-yin) was founded by Italian rider Giovanni Battaglin, one of only three riders in the history of the sport to have taken victory in the Giro d’italia and Vuelta a Espana in the same year (that year being 1981, and those others being Eddy Merckx and Alberto Contador).
That same year Battaglin established a framebuilding business and in the seasons that followed his bikes notched up 27 Grand Tour stage wins, and most famously helped propel Stephen Roche to his Triple Crown in 1987. Thirty years on, Roche’s iconic bike has been reissued, and the results are a wonderfully quirky bag.
You’ll have noticed the word ‘Officina’ on the down tube along with Battaglin, which differentiates the steel arm of the business from the carbon one. It also means the 1987 has been made exclusively in Italy, just another of the era-defining hallmarks of the original bike.
Others are the gloriously 1980s red and blue paint fades and lurid green graphics, the lugged construction, engraved detailing and of course, the steel tubing.
Save for the gold dove sticker it’s not possible to verify from the outside, but Battaglin says the tubeset
is born of an exclusive partnership with Columbus to remake its fabled SLX tubeset, once thought the very best in racing steel. This time around it gets the moniker ‘SLX New’, but the old double-butted, internally rifled characteristics are still there. That means tubes have been thinned down in their middles to shave weight, and cut inside certain tubes in certain key areas are helical swirls that purport to increase stiffness. No historical stone has been left unturned.
Flexible friend
Regardless as to the whys and wherefores of the SLX New tubeset’s claims, the visual effect it lends the Battaglin is simply stunning. I can happily attest to this being one of the most pointed-at bikes I’ve ridden in quite some time, even turning the heads of friends I’ve hitherto thought uninterested in bicycles (the heathens). I can also attest to this being one of the liveliest bikes I’ve ridden, possible ever. Because the 1987 is flexy.
Riding the bike hard resulted in a tangible bowing of the frame torsionally, fore-aft, that not only could I feel, but that other riders I was with told me they could see. I may not be laying down Hoy-level watts, but even then the 1987 flexed considerably when I wrested the bars or stomped meaningfully on the pedals. A sprinter’s beast this ain’t, and it led me to wonder at just how strong and skilful riders must have been 30 years ago, when a bike like this would have been considered the height of performance engineering.
However, for all its shortcomings when compared to today’s top-level machines – which include steel and aluminium, because it’s not just carbon that can do stiff – I found a richness to the ride quality, which I think can be best explained thusly:
Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly share an era, a kinship and similarly legendary status. Yet given the choice, I’d rather go for a beer with Stephen Roche. King Kelly, I imagine, would be stoic and hard work, while Roche’s affability would extend beyond closing time and into the club down the road. And it’s the same with the 1987’s lively steel ride versus the far more clinical dead feeling inherent in many modern performance carbon fibre bikes.
What the 1987 lacks in stiffness it makes up for in a very spirited, very particular ride quality. Without
I may not be laying down Hoy-level watts, but the 1987 flexed considerably
anthropomorphising things too much, the 1987 has buckets of personality.
Right place, right time
I find that given long enough, most bikes’ quirks become normalised and forgotten as my muscle memory adapts, but over many weeks of testing the 1987 I still found its springy ride quality surprising every time I threw a leg over, and in most respects in a good way.
Along with sprinting, this isn’t a bike for fast descending, or at least not for someone of my chunky build. At 70kmh it felt a tad unsure of itself in a straight line, and I never really felt comfortable pushing it beyond that, because while it didn’t suffer from speed wobble
there was more than a whiff of speed wibble, with a tangible oscillation rippling through the frame from my hands to my backside when descending fast.
The flipside, though, is that this movement gives the 1987 one of the plushest rides I’ve encountered. It’s a marvel of comfortable sensibilities, reacting to even the smallest road imperfections to concoct a feeling not dissimilar to wearing a big knitted sweater on a crisp winter day. Imagine pedalling a bicycle through a Scandi-noir TV series and into a warmly lit pub and you’re basically there.
It also made the 1987 incredibly silent, the only real sound audible above the purring Miche freehub being the fizz and suck of sticky rubber on dry tarmac. And it also presented something I just couldn’t make my mind up on: handling. It all comes down to the type of corners.
Through quick, tight turns the 1987’s lack of stiffness showed. The steel fork, which did such a good job of flexing over rough straights, suddenly felt indirect and squirmy, making tight lines harder to track. But through long, flowing corners, the 1987 sang. Given time and space to pick a generously arcing line, the 1987 proceeded to glide with ease. When I found the right corner and hit it at the right speed, everything about the 1987 came together with Technicolor clarity.
For all these reasons I’d recommend anyone to get a test ride on 1987, or something similar from the Officina Battaglin steel stable. There really is a whole other riding experience to be found. Whether you like it, of course, is a matter entirely dependent on the type of riding you do and the expectations you have. But I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing the 1987 in my shed, ready for the Sunday best, the cafe run or even the odd Triple Crown-winning season. Another round, Stephen?
While it didn’t suffer from speed wobble there was a whiff of speed wibble