An icon of the cycling world passed away yesterday, leaving behind a legacy that changed cycling forever. Ugo De Rosa was 89. The company he founded and built into one of the most recognizable legacy brands will continue to be family-owned, with Ugo’s sons at the helm who all joined the company in the 1970s .
“Nothing extraordinary is ever born by a formula but by imagining what is not there and doing it” - Ugo De Rosa
Ugo De Rosa was just 19 years old when he first began building racing bicycles in 1953. His workshop was located in in Via Pila in Milan, an area oozing with cycling history and other great cycling companies who prized close proximity to the historic Vigorelli Velodrome.
In 1958 the young craftsman was approached by Raphaël Géminiani with the request that De Rosa build him a frame for the Giro d’Italia, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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De Rosa’s reputation and that of his frames bloomed, and before long the signature red heart logo was a fixture in the professional peloton. By 1969, De Rosa had accepted the role of frame builder and mechanic for Gianni Motta and his team.
When Eddy Merckx comes calling
About a decade later, the frame builder was once again approached by a star rider to build him a frame, only this time it was a rider who was already a legend himself.
Eddy Merckx had a reputation for being a rider who was very demanding of his equipment and the people who produced it, and according to the legend, Motta tried to avoid introducing the Belgian to De Rosa.
Whether or not that is indeed true, the two men met nonetheless, and in 1973 Ugo De Rosa became Eddy Merckx’s frame builder and mechanic. De Rosa supplied frames for Merckx’s Molteni team up until 1978 when Merckx retired.
Today, the company’s legacy lives on in the hands of Ugo’s three sons, as well as his grandson, who is the third generation bicycles craftsman to build De Rosa frames.
One commenter on the company’s Instagram announcement wrote: “Thank you for everything Maestro Ugo. And don't worry: you sowed well. Maybe once in a while he could take a look at his family and cycling like he always did in the factory in Cusano Milanino.”
Natascha Grief got her first bike shop job before she was old enough to drink. After a six-year stint as a mechanic, earning a couple pro-mechanic certifications and her USA Cycling Race Mechanics license, she became obsessed with framebuilding and decided she wanted to do that next. After Albert Eistentraut literally shooed her off his doorstep, admonishing that if she pursued framebuilding she will be poor forever, she landed an apprenticeship with framebuilder Brent Steelman in her hometown of Redwood City, CA. After that, she spent several years working for both large and not-so-large cycling brands. Somewhere in there she also became a certified bike fitter. Natascha then became a certified personal trainer and spent nine years honing her skills as a trainer and coach, while also teaching Spin. During the dumpster fire that was the year 2020, she opened a fitness studio and began contributing regularly to Runner’s World and Bicycling as a freelance writer. In 2022, she joined the staff of Bicycling as News Editor.
