On group rides, we covetously ogle fellow riders’ new wheelsets.
Kibbitzing at the local bike shop, we yammer on about gear ratios
and elliptical chainrings. How many hours have you burned pining
over saddle and seatpost choices? Yeah, me too. But apart from the
big, heavy theological debate—disc vs. rim—when was the last time
you talked brakes?
Why is that? My theory is that it’s because a bike is about motion—
going fast and faster. Brakes are a buzzkill. Sure, we need them, just
like we need f lu shots. But as long as they work, we forget about them.
There is one set of brakes, however, that has managed to escape
this obscurity, for reasons that are both f lattering and embarrassing:
Campagnolo’s Delta brakes.
When these brakes were on the market (introduced in 1984, only
readily available in ’86, and dropped by ’92), they grabbed the attention
of cyclists all over the world. People lusted after their unusual design
and unmistakable look. Today, these brakes live on in the aftermarket,
with “new-old stock” prices in the thousands of dollars. The brakes
show up on T-shirts and socks, on the start lines of L’Eroica rides.
But the funny thing about these brakes is, depending on who you
ask, they stopped on a dime or they barely stopped at all.
Introduced as part of the company’s new C-Record group, the
brakes were rather humbly described, in the company’s advertise-
ments, as: “A center-pull brake with an articulated parallelogram.”
This mechanism, hidden from view, looked rather like an inverted
diamond; as the rider braked, the cable pulled upward, which f lattened
the diamond and pulled the brake arms toward the rim. The action is
hypnotic to watch. This geometric feature, the ad continued, “allows
braking power on the brake shoes higher than the power applied to
the lever.” Campagnolo called it “progressive braking.”
But it was aesthetics, more than performance, that really helped
stoke cyclists’ desire. The brakes weren’t even called “Deltas”—they
were simply the brakes of the C-Record group. And yet their form was
so unusual, so compelling, that the name for the triangular Greek
letter stuck. “I remember ogling them as a kid when they first came
out,” says Alex Ostroy, the New York City graphic designer responsible
for socks bearing the iconic Delta brake silhouette. “They seemed
like they came from another planet where cycling gods forged Italian
steel from Vatican jewels and a few locks from Cipollini’s mane.” He
is being only slightly hyperbolic.
Even today, if you squint a bit, they don’t even really look like brakes.
The whole assemblage looks like it could be a sleek corkscrew from
an Italian design house like Alessi, gleaming and full of sinuous lines.
More than bike kit, it looks like something you might find in the glass
display cases of MOMA’s permanent design collection. The massive
faceplate, adorned with the winged wheel of the Campagnolo logo, is
unmistakable. Look at an image of Greg Lemond on his time trial bike
at the 1990 Tour de France (or Fignon in ’89), and the Delta brake
housing, swooping up from the tire and shielding the head tube, is the
first thing you notice. Underneath that removable faceplate lurked
a mechanism so intricate—76 pieces in all—it evokes the complica-
tions of a Swiss watch.
If it seems a bit difficult, at this historical moment, to imagine a
Campy brakeset being such a thing, we need to time-travel to the 1980s.
Campagnolo dominated the world of performance cycling equipment.
Its groupsets were de facto on the bikes of Tour winners.
And while the whole Campagnolo brand was known for its atten-
tion to beauty and detail, the Deltas were a cut above. “It was like
the needle went across the record,” recalls industry veteran Mark
Riedy, who now runs True PR, a company that represents Canyon,
Zwift, and Rapha. “The first time you saw a picture, you were like,
‘Holy shit!’ ” As visually compelling as they were, Riedy recalls, they
were expensive. “The world of cycling was very different then,” he
says. “If you went to a bike race on the weekend, you would rarely
see C-Record.” The price—at around $400, several times the cost
of other brakes—just added to the mystique.
A bold new design with beautiful craftsmanship, used on the bikes
of the top pros—what could go wrong? Plenty. The brakes that could
stop traffic didn’t actually seem so great at stopping. Campagnolo
recalled the first release entirely, temporarily replacing it with so-
called Cobalto brakes, which looked like Super Record brakes with a
blue stone glittering atop the mounting nut. ISSUE 5 • BICYCLING.COM 59