Roger de Vlaeminck Personal Gazelle 753 Team DAF 1981

There are only 3 riders in cycling history who were able to win all five of the Monuments, the big classic one-day races. And among these strong riders, there is only one Monsieur Parix-Roubaix.
The cycling legend that is Roger de Vlaeminck won the race in Northern France a whooping, record-setting four times.
In fact, Roger de Vlaeminck was one of the most versatile riders of his era whose impressive palmarès include a cyclo-cross world championship as well as dozens of stage wins in grand tours.

In the year 1981 he was racing for Belgian-based pro team D.A.F.-Trucks-Côte d'Or-Gazelle, often just shortened to 'Team DAF'.
It was an interesting year for de Vlaeminck which included the capture of the Belgian road championships as well as podium places in numerous classics.
The bike on which he achieved his results was a special version of the Gazelle Champion Mondial. The Champion Mondial was a super successful design with which the Dutch company helped an uncountable number of racers to victories over the span of two decades. The base of these frames had always been Reynolds tubes and Bocama lugs

This Gazelle here is more special in the way that its main frame was built using Reynolds 753 tubing. This legendary heat-treated tubeset offered a tensile strength which had been unheard of before. It was possible to draw the tubes to a wall thickness of only 3mm in the thinnest section. This resulted in lightweight, yet strong frames.

Unfortunately, processing these tubes was notoriously difficult, since they could only be soldered at a narrow range of temperature and needed to be handled with close tolerances in general. Cold-setting a frame was practically impossible and only few frame builders were allowed to utilize Reynolds 753.
Their lack of availability and the cost of making a frame from them combined with the fact that some of the best riders of their time were provided with such frames, established the tubeset a reputation as being the absolute cutting edge stuff for professional cyclists.
Reynolds 753 gained an almost transcendental status.

Nonetheless some cyclists preferred to combine these rigid tubes with a more compensating, elastic fork. Which is, what we see here on Roger's Gazelle: his fork of Reynolds 531 tubing would likely offer far more comfort on the cobbled classics of Northern France and Belgium.

This collectible piece of cycling history is interesting both as a bike that belonged to one of the most iconic classics specialists and being made from one of the most iconic steel tubesets.

Beautiful and rare!