Bike of the Month – October 2021

This months ‘Bike of the Month’ is the 2021 OldVelos Concours d’Elegance winner, restored to an incredibly high standard by  Fintan Foley (of County Kerry, Ireland). You may remember the Holdsworth that Fintan brought to the OldVelos Vintage Festival last year that ‘blew the competition out of the water’ well this year he has trumped that with another Holdsworth. We are looking forward to seeing what he brings to the Festival next year, he has hinted but we will say nothing for the moment! In the meantime just enjoy the slideshow below.

Bicycle Make:             Holdsworth

Bicycle model:            Professional Italia

Date of Manufacture: 1976

Holdsworth Professional from 1976. Original ex Team Frame (Frame No: 41760) now restored to Italia finish with the little extra chrome.

Holdsworth broke new ground with this frame which has 75′ parallel angles resulting in a shorter wheel-base 39.75″ and higher bottom bracket ground clearance 10.3/4″. However the Professional Team who took a hat-trick of British road race titles ’74 – ’75 & ’76, found the bikes very twitchy to ride and switched back to the 74′ Professional frame early in the season. Less than 20 of these team frames were built, of which this is a rare survivor. By today’s standards, these measurements and angles would be very acceptable.

At this time there was a big effort to reduce weight and some of the components have interesting Drillium features! The bike has been restored with genuine period correct components which include the very rare hollow Campagnolo “Super Record Titanium Bottom Bracket”, and “Superleggeri Pedals with Titanium axles”.

The bike is built from period correct components as used by the Holdsworth Professional team of 1976. A little bit of artistic liberty was taken to embellish some of the Drillium components from the era.

Groupset:                    Campagnolo Professional Super Record

Saddle:                        Cinelli Unicanitor “leather covered and lightly padded

Seatpost:                     Campagnolo Super Record Fluted.

Bars and Stem:           Cinelli Double Iron Mask Logo Bars & Cinelli 1R (early version) Stem.

Transmission:              Regina Oro” 6 speed Block & “Regina Oro” Chain

Rims:                           Super Champion Competition “Medaillel D’Or” Rims

Hubs:                           Campagnolo Super Record Large Flange Hubs”, with Campagnolo straight lever skewers.

TA Bottle Cage, with “Holdsworth Shop” Team drinking bottle. Campagnolo Aluminium Toe Clips and Campagnolo Leather Straps with Campagnolo Buttons.