Specialized: A Legacy of Pink
I was catching up on the European cross scene in the lead up to this weekend’s world championships, and I saw that the Czech Republic’s Zdenek Stybar won at the world cup event in Lievin. The 2-time and reigning world champion has been out shined by the exploits of Nys and Pauwels, and now suddenly he emerges from their shadows to take a win…..on a pink bike? This ain’t the Giro and Stybar’s not Italian, so why? Well, Stybar is a professional with Omega Pharma- Quickstep, the same UCI team as Boonen and now Leipheimer. With the demise of HTC-Highroad, the Belgian team picked up Specialized as their bike sponsor. Never slow to capitalize on an opportunity, Specialized lost no time kitting their hopeful for a cross world championship with the latest Crux carbon cyclocross bike.
Yeah, yeah, I get that….WTF’s up with pink?
Well, Specialized’s first mountain bike team in 1984 was called Team Stumpjumper. In the early days of mountainbike racing, this first ever team of professionals consisted of mainly road and cyclocross racers, and they used dropbar bikes painted PINK. As best as I can tell, the bikes used 26” wheels/tires, but they surely do like cyclocross bikes.
That mean besides John Tomac and Jacquie Phelan famously riding with dropbar offroad, the whole effing Team Stumpjumper was using them. I’m hot to build another dropbar mtb for myself; it’d be rad to have a modern pink Specialized Stumpjumper S-works.
