Campagnolo, they make me weep…

Hi Folks,

let me say at the outset that I’m a big Campagnolo fan. No question. Their levers and derailleurs have lasted me really well, and are (for me) dead easy to use and built to last. I’m talking (fairly) old-school mechanical 10 speed here.

I have an ancient steel audax bike, with a 20+ year old Veloce rear mech. and Racing triple front (I don’t think many racers ever used a triple, but hey, whatever); my “lightweight” bike has 10s Record front and rear. They all perform flawlessly, and who doesn’t love that thumb button where you swing onto a downhill and zoom up 5 gears in a trice.

But, and this is a big ‘but’… Campagnolo are in the goddamn dark ages when it comes to cassettes. Both my ‘shopping’ bike and my lightweight have triple front chainrings, because our Italian friends think that their entire customer base deserves nothing more helpful than close ratio cassettes. A bit like all car drivers having to stick with racing gearboxes, instead of what comes with their Nissan Micra.

I got round it on the shopper/audax by using an aftermarket 10-28, to replace the pathetic 11-26 offered by Campag., and a 24 tooth inner ring. Needless to say, Shimano (this is pre-SRAM road groupsets) at the time already offered a 10-28, including a Dura Ace option. I used the Campagnolo 11-26 on my lightweight, with a 26 tooth inner ring. Even with triples on the front, the top gears are pretty low; easy to spin out on the downhills.

And I’m sure y’all are thinking “24 to 28, that’s proper low”. Not if you regularly ride hills of 25% and steeper it isn’t. And try it with a bike (with panniers and a full load) weighing 22.5kg. And being the wrong side of 58. I’ve seen sportives where dozens of Mamils (folks 20 years younger than me) are walking up casual 10% gradients, clickety clackety, and they all have 50/34 with cassettes around 11-31, maybe 11-34. Your standard issue on a modern mid-range carbon job.

Campagnolo’s idea of being useful back then was to offer a 13-29 which (as I’m sure you’ll immediately spot) gives a smaller range than an 11-26, but requires (if you don’t want to spin out) larger chainrings. Pure genius. Less range, more metal, more weight. Nobel prize to that designer.

So, here we are in the present, and someone invented Gravel. Campagnolo responded with the Ekar, which looks like one of the better offroad groupsets, but not one I’d want to use on the road. Gaps between lower ratios too big, too much chain wear. And still nobody can do the arithmetic. What’s the point of making a 10-44 if a 9-42 weighs less and has a bigger gear range? But they did embrace the idea of really small sprockets, so my hopes were raised. The difference between 10-33 and 11-34 is significant in road terms. 9-30 would be better still.

And now we have modern SRAM groupsets, with a proper 10-33 cassette. But it’s wireless only… 🙁 and I still want mechanical. Reasons are many and varied, but include doing lots of long lonely hilly rides in the middle of nowhere (no backup whatsoever, frequently no phone signal): wireless is less reliable, heavier, much more expensive, and I still want that Campagnolo thumb lever.

Yes, yes, I know you personally have done thousands of rides, and it’s never failed, and you don’t mind charging it regularly, and you don’t mind the extra weight, and you’re rolling in cash. I’m happy for you.

All I want for Christmas is for Campagnolo to wake up, smell the bleeding coffee, and offer me a 12-speed 10-33 (or 9-30)) Super Record road cassette and an SR rear mech that’ll cope with the chain slack. I won’t even need their chainrings: I can get something from White Industries or whoever (still cheaper than the 29/45 EPS chainset). Then I’d have a decent “hill killer” gear range with double chainrings which, trust me, are a whole lot easier to deal with than triples.

Yes, it is a big ask, especially the rear mech. It might need another 5mm in length adding to the jockey cage: what we used to call a ‘long cage’, back in the day. And a new jockey cage isn’t a whole new rear mech, just a bolt on component. They already did it once when they introduced the 11-34 cassette.

OK, polemic over, hope all you Campagnolo fans out there had a laugh. And just think how much of that potential market is going down the plughole because team Italy are a bit slow to catch on…

Be careful,

John M.