NUMBER 20 OF 20: THIS IS THE END.
By Taber Newton
Litespeed revived the legendary Ghisallo for a limited run of 20 bikes. Taber Newton is the proud owner of the final Ghisallo. He tells the story of his relationship with the world's most iconic featherweight titanium bike.
I started at Bikeman.com in January of 2000. It was my Junior year of high school, and I was the newest shop rat. The low man on the totem pole. I'd clean the bathrooms, sweep up messes, restock shelves. I think the trickiest thing anyone would let me do was install a kickstand on a kid's bike; if I was lucky. While the mail-order side of Bikeman was booming, the local shop side was (and still is) a small-town bike shop with a huge depth of bikes, ranging from a used Trek 820 for $50 to a bespoke Ti bike.
Back then you didn't check the internet for the latest bikes and parts. You waited for a magazine. And then once a year, usually starting in late summer, the next model year catalogues for every bike brand and component manufacturer would start coming out. This is something that EVERYONE at the shop would be waiting for. What new stuff was your favorite brand going to release? Part of my job back then was actually organizing these catalogues for customers... and I may have milked that particular job a bit by spending a little too much time going through the catalogues, and not quite enough time keeping them organized.
We were a Litespeed dealer, and did I ever spend time pouring over those Litespeed catalogues. Back then the Vortex and the Tanasi were what I really drooled over. I had to have one. But I was in high school, and that was going to have to wait.
I actually stayed at Bikeman through college, and eventually they trusted me with more important tasks, such as installing tubes into kids' bikes. Then in 2002 I got to go to Las Vegas for Interbike.
Interbike was the largest bicycle industry trade show in the world at the time, and it was an overflowing sea of everything that the cycling industry had to offer. It was over the top. It was huge. Everyone from the cycling industry was there: Gary Fisher in purple velvet, Ernesto Colnago in an Italian suit, Greg LeMond, George Hincapi, Dario Pegoretti...
And that year, Litespeed launched the original Ghisallo.
It was unreal. A sub-900g frame. That's still light by today's standards. Back then it was mind-bending.
I had to have one.
But I was in college, and it wasn't meant to be.
So I had to wait.
Actually, I had to wait almost 24 years. But I think it was worth it.
One feature of the original Ghisallo was an extremely light, 3-piece welded bottom bracket. This piece was extremely labor-intensive to produce. 2 years ago, Litespeed found a box of 20 of these BBs, so they decided to bring back the Ghisallo for one last 20-unit production run.
And this time, I absolutely had to have one.
So, this is the end. Not just for the Ghisallo, but it feels like the end for rim brakes. Rim brake groupset production has all but ended, and new wheel and frame availability is dwindling quickly. In a lot of ways, getting the final production number of the final run of the Ghisallo feels like a fitting end to the rim brake era for me.
And the Ghisallo feels like the right bike to commemorate this with. It feels like it sort of bookends a certain era in cycling... with incredibly light, weight-weenie, rim-brake bikes that really took hold in the early 00's. This bike encapsulates the look and feeling of the last quarter century of road cycling. I love this era of cycling, and this bike is the absolute essence of everything about it that made it great.
So I had to have one... and it had to be built a certain way.
Deda. Chris King. Campagnolo. These are the brands I've trusted to build bikes with for the past 25 years. And, of course, for me this bike had to be mechanical. Sram Red 22 was the lightest... and felt like the obvious choice. I'm no Luddite. I have aero, disc brake, electronic shifting bikes—plenty of them, in fact—but I still prefer the tactile feedback of a mechanical shifting group. The final touch was the brakes. Cane Creek eeBrakes really felt like they rounded out the build.
On this final production run, the shells were engraved with not just the production number, but the owner could elect to have their initials as well. My mom died in December, after an almost two-year battle with ovarian cancer. So I elected to have her initials engraved on it instead of mine.
It makes the bike that much more special for me... to have my mom with me on every ride and every climb.
14.1lbs (6.39kg) complete as pictured with pedals and cage in size ML.
It's light. Not as light as it could be, but at 43, neither am I. It could be lighter, but I wanted it to still feel confident and inspiring for all riding, not just as light as possible for the scales.
The frame is actually slightly heavier than the original, but my inclination is that is a good thing. It's a little stiffer than the old frame, and I think it's better for it. My guess is this bike rides the way you want to imagine the old one did.
So, it's a little stiffer at the headtube and BB, but it hasn't lost the comfort. Or the magic. The bike moves with you, the way you want it to when you're climbing out of the saddle. It feels springy and effortless. Climbing is a joy, but more than that, every ride on it is. It rides the way you dream a bike like this will.
So this is it. Number 20. The last of the lightweight rim brake bikes. And it feels like an appropriate bookend to the era. It feels like the special finale this type of bike deserves.
This is the end.
