"Tafi said he was extremely pleased with the ride. He mentioned that in his last team, he was so unhappy with the bike that he actually used another bike painted over instead of the sponsor’s bike. "
…he just transfered from CSC…any truth to this? It’s hard to hide a Soloist, P3 or even a compact R2.5…is he bluffing?
read the article here:
I think he rode for Allesio-Bianchi in 2004 so maybe he’s bashing Bianchi.
I’m pretty sure he rode for CSC and Mapei before that…read the interview with him at bottom of the page and you’ll see that same thing said there.
he rode for Alessio in 2004 and CSC the year before.
A buddy of mine is a HUGE Tafi fan, and he told me that while Tafi was with CSC, he was frustrated with his bike, (no reason why), but that for the classics he had a Colnago painted CSC colors. You could pry find some Classics pictures with Tafi on that bike. And Colnago’s didn’t use the integrated headsets, and Cervelo’s did (one way to tell).
I doubt he was bashing Cervelo, we always got along great with him and he always liked the bikes. His last team was Alessio, and I can’t see anything wrong with the bikes he rode there either, as they were Bianchis.
At CSC, he always rode the Soloist and the SuperProdigy (the R2.5 didn’t exist yet in the spring of 2003 and as you know he doesn’t ride much after the Spring. In fact I don’t think we ever shipped the team an R2.5 in his size that entire year). For Paris-Roubaix, we made as many bikes ready as possible and had them by the side of the road of every pave section. I’ve mentioned all this before but I can’t find it right now, but for Tafi, we had a Soloist, two SuperProdigies and a Colnago C-40. The SuperProdigies were in various geometries as we were trying to finetune the handling with his feedback (and he also used the Colnago for back-to-back comparisons to a bike he was used to riding at Mapei.
During the race, he flatted so often that he ended up riding the SuperProdigy with his preferred geometry, the Soloist, and the C-40. The only bike he never rode was the one I logged along the whole day from pave to pave, as he never flatted in front of me (which I was both happy and sorry about as it would have been an interesting experience). That was the only race that he (or any CSC rider for that matter) ever rode a couple of k on a non-Cervelo.
Too bad he couldn’t put a good race together Sunday, I was pulling for him.