Craig Calfee

From bamboo e-bikes to full suspension racers, frame building pioneer Craig Calfee talks carbon fibre, Greg LeMond and the future of bikes as we know it

- James Spender

Cyclist: While many companies claim to have invented the carbon fibre bicycle, there is general consensus that you made the first fully carbon fibre frame to be raced at the Tour de France. How did that come about?

Craig Calfee: The potted history is I got my start with carbon fibre working for a company making composite shells for racing rowing boats. I built my first all-carbon fibre bike in 1987 as a result of crashing my steel Schwinn, and two years later I’d hired a machinist and we’d started trading under the name Carbonframes [Calfee now sells under his own name].

We were watching the 1989 Tour de France and Greg LeMond was riding his rebranded TVT and we were really ragging on it, saying how we could make a better bike because this is just glued carbon tubes in aluminium lugs, but we figured he had a sponsorship deal. But then this guy who brought in Time pedals to the US, sponsoring Greg at the time, saw our bikes and said we should send one to Greg’s dad because they were looking for custom carbon bikes for the whole team. So we did, he loved the look of it and we went from there. The team ended up riding my bikes in the 1991 Tour.

Cyc: At the time, very few other riders would even go near carbon. What was different about LeMond?

CC: Greg was an open-minded guy, but the thing that convinced him was descending on my bike. He’d just finished an uphill TT at Paris-Nice, the first time he’d ridden it. I saw him at the top and he said, ‘Well it climbs great, but the real test is how it descends so I’m going to take it down the backside of the mountain and meet you at the hotel.’