For me, it's La Vie Claire. The Hinault and Lemond battles of the mid 80's were some of the most exciting. Of course it never hurt that they rode LOOK bikes ;)

Fausto Coppi with two time winner Gino Bartali as a disgruntled domestique. I have to confess, I too loved the La Vie Claire team (particularly 1986).

La Vie Claire's a good one. Ariostea with Sorenson, Lelli, Argentin, Riis, etc. wore my favorite jersey. Also Flandria with Pollentier and Maertens (all drug team) and of course the Molteni's.

La Vie Claire's a good one. Ariostea with Sorenson, Lelli, Argentin, Riis, etc. wore my favorite jersey. Also Flandria with Pollentier and Maertens (all drug team) and of course the Molteni's.

Is that your jersey? Very cool. I'm still waiting for a La Vie Claire. Everytime they come up on Ebay, they're very small or they sell for over $100 used!

You might want to look for the La Vie Claire jersey at prendas ciclismo site. They have a retro line if that interest you. I generally find though that I can't find my size (3) but you might have better luck.

Regards

Team Obsolete

Flandria were quite popular with the infamous 'red guard'. I see that someone has resurrected the Flandria name but only do modern alu/carbon frames.

www.flandriabikes.com

As stated above Ariostea when they were using those gorgeous black and dark red Colnago Carbitubos!!!!!!!!

Also my fave teams were PDM, Systeme U (great jersey!!)and Kas!!!

I was a big La Vie Claire team fan too. Look at the domestiques they had. Andy Hampsten and Steve Bauer...comon...that is some power. I think the look bikes came pretty late in the teams life though. I have some snaps of their team car at the coors classic in 1985 or 86 and the car is covered with Hinault framed bikes. It was from the year the badger won the coors classic.

My other favorite retro team from the US was the old denver spoke team. Same time frame, but it was full of Alexi Grewal's brothers.

As for other Euro teams from the 80's I would have to throw in the Peugeot team. I used to ride on a US based Peugeot team in the 80's as a junior, and it was cool to be wearing the same kit as the pro's. We even got the first shipment of Vitus/Peugeot carbon frames when they were made. They all broke in the six months, but the replacements seemed to hold up. The pain was they didn't have any shifter bosses or bottle cage mounts. They were afraid to drill into the carbon tubes or bond anything to the surface I guess.

Same goes for me - Italian team for the '49 Tour. They were the only team to finish with all of their riders still in the race - out of 120 starters there were only 55 finishers, 12 of whom were from the Italian "A" team!

Coppi finished 1st, 11 minutes ahead of Bartali, with Frenchman Marinelli in 3rd place over 25 minutes back! Coppi won the final time trial seven minutes ahead of 2nd place Bartali.

Bartali and Coppi worked together to win the most important mountain stages and gain back the 37 minutes Coppi lost in the first five days. What a great race, and what a great team!

While we're on the topic; anyone have one of the reproduction Italian team jerseys from that year. Santini made them in 1995 for the Italian TV movie "Il Grande Fausto", but I haven't been able to find one. It's green with white and red stripes around the chest and cuffs, pointy collar, and front pockets. If you have one, let me know.

I have pictures of some of the other Santini replica jerseys from my collection on my new web site: http://aldo-ross.agreatserver.com/jerseyreplicas.htm.

Aldo Ross

i can't say how beautiful i think those jersey's are. grazie mille !!!

thanks for posting the link.

ciao

My favourit was a GIS-Gelati, Campagnolo jersey. It was white lycra, but (before sublimation) the graphics were of bonded velvet (you know what I mean?). I cannot find any pictures, nor the jersey.

Had this when I was 15 years old. Moser!

Huhhh, huh. You said jizz.

I never saw the white lycra Gis-Campagnolo jersey, but the wool and acrylic versions show up regularly on eBay, especially from Great Britain for some odd reason. Did your's look like this one?

Nope. But that one is cool enough! Thanks!

My favourit was a GIS-Gelati, Campagnolo jersey. It was white lycra, but (before sublimation) the graphics were of bonded velvet (you know what I mean?). I cannot find any pictures, nor the jersey.

Had this when I was 15 years old. Moser!

Huhhh, huh. You said jizz.
The first lycra based products were flocked. It is what you described with the velvety feeling material bonded to the fabric. The down side was the stuff wore off real easy, but it did leave a trace of the old color so you could read what it said.