And then in 1988, Andy Hampsten was the first American to win a Grand Tour, and also, the first rider to do so on Shimano Dura-Ace. Alex Steeder was the first North American to wear the yellow jersey. It's fitting that this 7400 is on a 7-Eleven team bike, because like Shimano, 7-Eleven were also responsible for just broadening that very Euro-centric peloton. You could shift gears without giving it a second thought. Friction shifters still had their die-hard fans, but having that pre-set click was revolutionary. Prior to this, levers and derailleurs had been able to move freely, and they were held in place only with friction, meaning that you, the rider, had to manually adjust your gears on the fly.īy adding clicks, Shimano sped up shifting, and dramatically reduced the amount of rider input required. it added clicks to shifters with Shimano Index System, or SIS. In 1978, Shimano introduced an 11-tooth sprocket, but it wasn't until 1984 that it really started shaking things up in the industry. Most important Dura-Ace innovations Shimano Index System, 1984ĭura-Ace on Sean Yates' 7-Eleven team bike In that first year, they were rewarded with a Tour de France stage win and second place in the Men's road race World Championship. It did, however, manage to find one team: the Flandria team from Belgium, who happily took the groupsets, but on condition that Shimano listened to their feedback and then implemented changes, which, actually, when you think about it, is kind of the blueprint for how Shimano's been working with teams ever since. Shimano realised that in order to get its foot in the door, it needed to work with a pro team, but it came up against a narrow-minded, dogmatic and Euro-centric peloton. Because who doesn't want their groupset to be ace?įirst generation Dura-Ace looked a lot like everything else available at the time, and for good reason us cyclists, even now, are quite sceptical of anything new and different. Now, why the heck is it called Dura-Ace? Apparently, the name is a combination of Duralumin, which was a specific type of aluminium alloy used in the first edition of Dura-Ace, the word durability, and also the word 'ace'. However, they knew that in order to crack Europe, they needed to have some success in road racing. The Japanese company had already had a lot of success in the US, supplying derailleurs and three-speed hub gears to the American behemoth, Schwinn. Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon, the Sydney Opera House was completed, the first ever mobile phone call was made, and Shimano released Dura-Ace, its first groupset aimed at high-performance road racing. So we partnered up with Shimano to tell it.Īlong the way, we'll look at some of the most important Dura-Ace-equipped bikes in history, including Sean Yates' 7-Eleven team bike, a Lance Armstrong-era Trek OCLV, and Mark Cavendish's Tour de France stage-winning Specialized McLaren Venge. But how did we get to this point?Ģ023 marks the 50th anniversary of Dura Ace, and the story is one that every cycling nerd, and even some normal people, need to know. Bikes with Dura-Ace on have won 18 of the last 25 Tours de France (if we include a certain Lance Armstrong). Shimano Dura-Ace has long been considered the gold standard of bike components.
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