Brooklyn cycling team
Brooklyn - one of the truly iconic names of the early-to-mid 1970's pro peloton. Roger de Vlaeminck was the best-known, but certainly not the only, top-drawer rider on the team. (Roger's brother and teammate, Eric, pretty much owned the pro cyclo-cross world while he was racing.) The "Capt. America" jerseys together with the unbelieveably gorgeous cobalt blue Gios-Torino frames may be the best visual combo ever raced.

Brooklyn was (and may still be) a brand of chewing gum. The team was registered in Italy, but it almost always had a mixed roster of Italians and Belgians, roughly half-and-half. Roger de V. was one of the very best ever Classics riders (he holds the record for Paris-Roubaix wins with 4 - he also won most of the other biggies at some point). He also won the Tour of Switzerland one year, if memory serves, along with the points jersey in the Giro at least once. He was one of the few who never just rolled over and played dead for Merckx (Walter Godefroot, the erstwhile head of the Telekom team, was another.) Roger de Vlaeminck remains one of the all-time greats of road racing (and was pretty good at cyclo-cross as well), and he also remains the historical "face" of the team.

Because Brooklyn was an Italian-based team, the Giro was a higher priority for the sponsor than was the Tour, although Brooklyn showed up there some, also. The team failed to appear at the TdF one year for a most unusual reason: the head of the Brooklyn Chewing Gum Co. was kidnapped by the Red Brigades or some such group and the team's TdF budget for the year instead went to pay his ransom.

The sponsor ultimately pulled the plug sometime in the late '70's (they were certainly still around in 1976 and gone by 1980) because if team infighting. In their last year, the sponsor issued an ultimatum - win the Giro, or the sponsorship ends and the team goes bye-bye. It was not as unreasonable demand as it may seem, because the team had two Belgians capable of winning it - Ronnie de Witte and Johan de Muynck. They didn't much care for each other, though, and neither would work for the other. Their personal feud also split the team - in effect, they were both riding with half a team that regarded the other half of the Brooklyn team as at least as much of an enemy as anybody in a different jersey. Unlike Lemond and Hinault in the '85 and '86 Tours, neither de Witte nor de Muynck won. The sponsor, true to his word, pulled the plug on the team. P.S. A year or two later, de Muynck won the Giro for his new team (don't remember who it was, though).

”Il restauro della bicicletta di Roger De Vlaeminck, vincitrice della Paris-Roubaix 1977”

Cykeln  Roger De Vlaemincks, vann Paris-Roubaix 1977 med.
Aldo Gios och hans son Marco

Cykeln  Roger De Vlaemincks, vann Paris-Roubaix 1977 med.