The company reissued the Deltas, but not exactly to rave
reviews. “My memories of the Delta brakes are, alas, not f lattering,”
says Davis Phinney, the former 7-Eleven star. “They definitely had
an all-or-nothing response. There was no such thing as feathering.
There’d be no response until you clamped down on your levers hard,
which caused you to skid, or worse, flip over your handlebars.” The
Campy-sponsored team was so disenchanted with the Deltas, Phinney
says, they switched to Shimano in 1987. I was told, by more than one
person, that Deltas were at least partially to blame for Campagnolo
subsequently losing its lock on the pro peloton.
How did this happen? Were they as bad as people say? Why, despite
their mechanical failings, do Deltas still evoke such passion?TO FIND THE ANSWERS, I talked
with Richard Storino. Now working
in the motorcycle industry, but still
an avid cyclist, Storino worked for
Campagnolo from 1985 until 2008.
During most of that period, he ran the
North American division. He arrived at
the company just after the first Deltas
had been recalled. “They were a little
too picky, too difficult to work with,”
he said.
That had to do, in part, with the
mechanism the brakes utilized. Year
after year, the Super Record group,
introduced in 1973, steadfastly featured
single-pivot side-pull brakes, where the
brake arms were pulled together by a
cable running off the side. Suddenly,
here was a center-pull brake, a technol-
ogy predating side-pull in which the
braking cable runs down the center of
two symmetrical brake arms.
Why would the company switch?
The answer to that question perhaps
lies in a deeper change in think-
ing that was just taking hold at the
time. Conventional logic held that
side-pulls were more effective in
most ways, but center pulls held one
particular advantage: They were more
aerodynamic. And competitors were
starting to take notice. Two years
earlier, Shimano released the Dura-Ace
AX Aero brake, which featured a mini-
mal center-pull design that seemed to
just melt into the fork crown, and that
the company claimed reduced drag by
2 percent. They only lasted two years
on the market, but they hinted at bigger things to come. In 1981,
Italian brand Modolo introduced its own limited-production aero
center-pull brake, the Kronos.
So when the Delta brakes hit the market in 1984, they were less a
radical reimagining of the brake than Campagnolo’s own twist on a
current idea. But unlike the offerings from those other brands, like
the skeletal AX or the simple black, ridged housing of the Kronos, the
Delta came wrapped in gleaming, sensuously curved aluminum. It was
expensive and looked it. It elevated the brake into a statement. Storino
recalls asking pro rider and Olympian Nelson Vails, then sponsored
by Campagnolo, which groupset he wanted. His response, as Storino
remembers it, was simple: “Yo, man, I want them triangle brakes.”THE FOURTH-
AND FIFTH-
GENERATION
DELTAS
USED A
FIVE-PIVOT
MECHANISM.60 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 5