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TECH NEWS

Miguel Indurain time trial bike for sale — a snip at just under 50 grand

Rare chance to grab a piece of hstory

Want to own a piece of cycling history? This bike is one of Miguel Indurain's machines from the year he began his five-years of total domination of the Tour de France. It can be yours for a mere $75,000 (£47,000)

According to the seller, the bike was built for Indurain's Banesto team when Pinarello returned as bike supplier in 1992.

Indurain won the time trial stage of the Tour of Romandy in 1992 on the bike and then Pinarello supplied the new bikes for the team and this one went into retirement in Indurain's personal collection, which is where most of his bikes remain.

But this one escaped into the wild when Indurain donated it for a charity raffle to raise funds to restore the church of San Juan in Cabra, Spain.

In 2010, Indurain signed the rear wheel at the opening of a bike lane and said he was pleased to see how well the bike had been looked after.

The bike is very much a machine that reflects its era and its rider. Indurain was famous for his time-trialling ability, churning over those 180mm Campagnolo cranks and 55/47 chainrings to ferocious effect.

The bike has a smaller front wheel, a fashion now outlawed by the UCI; not that anyone who buys this bike is likely to enter any races on it.

Now it's up for sale, and Indurain's bikes are sufficiently rare that the seller seems confident it's worth that rather eye-watering price tag.

If that's a bit rich for you, though, a skim of eBay's vintage bikes section reveals gems like this 1982 Colnago for a mere $22,222.22 or another Banesto Pinarello from 1995 — this time without the certainty it was used by Indurain, so it's a snip at $3,500.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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5 comments

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Flying Scot | 9 years ago
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Big Migs Rig.

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paulrbarnard | 9 years ago
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Memories... Would love to own it

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Welsh boy | 9 years ago
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I usually like the look of old bikes but this is just so ugly, if i had the money i would buy it and crush the thing (apart from the delta brakes which are things of beauty even if there were a case of form over function).

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truffy | 9 years ago
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The days before day-glo gave way to stealth black.

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Alistair | 9 years ago
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Think of the fixie potential

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