Me & My Bike - M Cipollini FB800 & FB1000
Perhaps only two men in the world own two M Cipollini road bikes. One is almost certainly Mario Cipollini, cycling superstar and sprinter nonpareil, the man who's lent his name to a brand of bicycles sufficiently refined to make the machinery of the pro peloton look, well, second rate. The other is Ridebike.co.uk customer, Brett Edbrook, whose passion for two-wheeled perfection has seen some of the most exotic machines of the last 20 years pass through his hands, many of which we’ve been happy to supply. But when Brett asked us to procure the exquisite products of Il Leone, we sensed a bar being been raised to new heights.
“I didn’t want the same bike as everyone else,” he replies when asked what attracted him to the Cipo. Fair enough. Unless Mario happens to be your neighbour (and we haven’t seen him in Dorset) you’re unlikely to encounter another M Cipollini on your Sunday morning training ride. To our knowledge, the only possibility of riding a Cipo in this fair county and spotting another is if Brett is out on his FB1000 and has lent you the FB800, a remote prospect given the cut-to-fit bespoke loveliness of the integral seat masts and the eye-watering price tags commanded by F1 standards of engineering.
In a stable of bikes supplied by Colnago, Yeti, and, yes, even Cipollini, to land the tag of “best bike” is some achievement. And yet this is the status Brett has afforded the FB1000, a piece of carbon fibre artwork more closely resembling an item of military hardware than a bicycle. If the Stealth bomber has a two-wheeled equivalent, it is the FB1000, a belligerently beautiful, lightweight, muscular beast of bike that looks fast even when standing still. The huge head tube is shaped like an arrowhead, while the toptube arcs like a long bow. The downtube cuts away deftly over the front wheel, an effect repeated still more dramatically by the seattube, which follows the line of the rear wheel like a silhouette. The integral seatmast is such a natural extension of the frame you wonder why seat posts were ever invented (ahh, yes –in an unenlightened age before bicycles were made entirely from carbon fibre).
The FB1000 is so obviously the product of bespoke manufacture it seems absurd to imagine it rolling off a production line. “If you look closely, you can see the imperfections in the carbon fibre,” says Brett. Well, pretty flippin’ closely. But he’s right. And its one of the things he loves about the FB1000 – it screams craftsmanship.
How to equip such a frameset? Here we deferred to Mr Edbrook: his bike, his project. Ridebike.co.uk customers know their bikes, and their own minds. Shifters, mechs, and calipers are Campag Super Record 11, naturalmente. The cockpit is a Pro Stealth Evo one-piece carbon handlebar and stem, while seating arrangements come courtesy of a Selle Italia SLR Carbon. Brett’s FB1000 rolls on Reynolds RZR hoops shod with Schwalbe Ultremo tyres. Nice.
Of course, it's no good having one M Cipollini artwork without owing a second, just in case. In case of what? Well, in case you fancy riding a different M Cipollini. Enter the FB800, Brett’s ‘second’ bike, and a replacement for a top-of-the-line frame from another supplier to the pro peloton, which failed. To continue our aerospace analogy, the FB800 is the Eurofighter to the FB1000’s Stealth – still terrifyingly fast, but without the otherworldly appearance of its cousin. Perfection is apparent in every angle of the FB800, whose true identity can be decoded by close inspection. The huge head tube screams stiffness. An impressively large down tube retains its diameter from head tube to bottom bracket, a similarly oversized affair. The seat tube and fork crown sweep back over the wheels for additional aerodynamic efficiency. A cut-to-fit, one-piece seat mast preserves the line of the seat tube from bottom bracket to saddle. Square chainstays complete a tube set that positively choruses “power transfer”. All are woven by M Cipollini’s craftsmen from an exquisite fabric of impossibly high-quality carbon fibre. A rectangle cut away from the seat tube provides a suitably subtle home for the mech hanger. Cables withdraw discreetly along elegant routings through the down and top tubes. Bespoke, open-sided, carbon fibre bottle cages are the final additions to this impressive creation.
Brett has set up the FB800 in similar style to the FB1000 – Super Record 11 shifters and mechs, Pro Stealth Evo bars, Selle Italia SLR Carbon saddle. You get the picture. The wheels are Lightweight, in every sense. “It’s a bit lighter than the FB1000,” says Brett, and he should know. He’s been ripping the FB800 around the country lanes of Moreton in the summer series of criterion races.
But what to ride in the winter? For Brett, the answer was a Colnago Master, another machine we were happy to supply. “I wanted something classic,” says Brett, describing perfectly the steel bicycle that dominated professional racing in the 1980s. “Its very comfortable,” he adds, having equipped his light blue Master with Campag Athena, an appropriately retro-styled, largely aluminum groupset that speaks to the frame’s heritage. Only the carbon chainset belies its modern pedigree.
The road isn’t the only place Brett exercises his passion for cycling. We were able to meet his needs for off-road machinery, courtesy of our friends at Yeti. His summer steed is an ASR Carbon, lightweight, explosive, and, with 100mm of travel, an ideal choice for local trails such as Purbeck and Wareham forest. On trips to Wales, Brett packs an ASR-5, a machine boasting much of the lightweight, carbon goodness of the ASR Carbon, but with five inches of travel rather than 100m. “It’s a bit more relaxed than the cross country bike,” says Brett. Finally, for winter use, he keeps a Yeti ARC, an alloy hardtail with “quite racy geometry” and a full XT groupset.
We get the same rush as our customers when we know we’ve kitted them out with the right bike. And if we can meet Brett’s demands for super exotic machinery, we’re pretty sure we can find something for everyone. Give us a call, head to the shop, or drop us a line to find out how we can help you find the bike of your dreams.
Timothy John
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