Lovell #11 Blue Red

Lovell is one of the brands of bikes, that really truely gets me excited. The story of the brand, the man behind the brand, and the bikes he made are all truly fantastic. Jocelyn Lovell was likely Canada's top cyclist in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was winning everything on a bicycle from road racing, to track competitions in all forms. Lovell got his chances of Olympic glory swiped away from him time after time do to several separate unfortunate events. Few people know that his move into frame building was precipitated by the Canadian government's decision not to send athletes to the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. That decision came in January 1980 and with his primary goal for the season having been thwarted, he decided to apprentice with Marinoni to learn to build bicycles. Turns out he only made 110 frames in 1981 and 1982. In 1982 he started working with Mark and Mike Mulholland, who fell in love with frame building. Lovell was looking to re-focus his efforts on training and riding instead of building bikes in hopes of 1984 Olympic gold. A deal was struck, and Mike Mulholland purchased Lovell bicycles, the tools and the materials off of Jocelyn in early 1983, becoming Cyclops. Mike Mulholland was trained by Jocelyn Lovell, who was trained by Giuseppe Marinoni, who was trained by Mario Rossin, who was trained by Ernesto Colnago, who was trained under Francesco Galmozzi. Neat lineage of fantastic bikes made by expert craftsmen. In August 1983, while Jocelyn was training for what he thought would finally be his chance to go to the world stage, he was struck by a dump truck leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. For a time, Quebec company Velosport continued to make Lovell branded bikes but they were nowhere near the quality of the bikes Lovell made. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the Velosport-Lovell's went to Jocelyn's charity of choice, for quadriplegic research. Today, bikes built by Jocelyn Lovell and very rare and cherished by anyone lucky enough to come across one. You can tell it as a real Lovell, by the hearts cut into the bottom bracket shell, the fork crown and the lugs. Love to see it. Jocelyn often used Shimano's AX line of aerodynamic components on his bikes, as at the time in the early 1980s, these were the top of the line offering. AX components were built with the idea of aerodynamics and light weight design in mind. They were actually the first bicycle components to be wind tunnel tested. Josh sourced this bike locally, and found the missing components all over the world. We waited a good deal of time for brand new reproduction rubber brake hoods that I am very impressed with. Another neat detail on this bike, that I only realized when I was photographing, is the slanted top tube that slightly slants up towards the head tube. A detail that is way ahead of its time as this style of frame did not become popular untill the 1990s. I am thrilled with how the bike turned out, everything looks fantastic and this will be a beautiful bike to ride. I am sure Josh will enjoy having this one in his collection.