Reviews

Legend Venticinquesimo

Beautiful, exclusive bike built for people who love bikes

The Legend Venticinquesimo we were loaned for the RCUK 100 shoot came from a lovely bike shop in Shoreditch called Le Beau Velo, which roughly translates as ‘beautiful, kick ass bikes’ (or at least it should do).

Legend are a brand founded in Italy in 2009 by Marco Bertoletti, a man with 30 years of frame-building experience, who decided to take it all and make a new brand, one that builds stunning bikes from all four major materials.

They’re based in Presezzo, near Bergamo, right in the heartland of Italian cycling, one of the most cycling-mad places in the world. If you put stock in the cycling-rich roots of your bike brands, Legend’s bikes might as well come with a complementary place on the start line at the Giro because it doesn’t get much better.

Some of the techniques used to make this frame are genuinely amazing. For example, all the welding is done in an inert gas chamber, and then each weld is individually finished by hand until it’s all but invisible

Legend reckon the Venticinquesimo (which translates as 25th, and that one’s true) is one of the most stunning bikes they’ve ever made, and it’s hard to argue with that. The frameset is a combination of grade 9 titanium lugs and 3K weave carbon tubes, taking a classic frame building technique and mixing it with new materials.

Some of the techniques used to make this frame are genuinely amazing. For example, all the welding is done in an inert gas chamber, and then each weld is individually finished by hand until it’s all but invisible.

And every single frame is handbuilt to order, so the geometry will be tailored exactly to fit you – great for any rider but even better if you have specific fit requirements that make stock frames a difficult proposition.

Basically, this isn’t a bike for racing, it’s a bike for people who like bikes

And the choices don’t stop with geometry. You can even choose what type of bottom bracket you want on the bike. Fancy BB30? No problem. And if you want to stay traditional with a threaded BSA bottom bracket, you can have that too. Same with routing.

Legend will build you one of these to fit mechanical or electronic shifting. Amazingly, Legend also offer a disc brake version of the frame, although you’ll need to contact them for pricing should you want one of them.

One thing Bertoletti pointed out to us when we spoke to him last year was that the Legend isn’t a performance bike. That doesn’t mean the ride quality won’t be lovely, but rather that working with dual materials provides challenges, and a dual material bike like this won’t – in pure performance terms – be quite like one of Legend’s full carbon frames.

Basically, this isn’t a bike for racing, it’s a bike for people who like bikes – setting aside the fact that you’d have to be completely mad (or eye-wateringly rich) to race on a frameset worth north of six grand.

Price: £6,300 (frameset only)
Website: Legend Factory

Another big attraction of the Venticinquesimo is exclusivity. This bike is like the limited edition of limited edition bikes, and the factory in Italy only makes enough of these every year to scrape into double figures. So not only do you get a bike that’s made to measure for you, it’s one on which you will almost certainly never have to nod to someone else riding on your Sunday morning ride.

Every Venticinquesimo frameset comes with a unique serial number laser etched into the frame, a small mark that confirms you as a member of a very exclusive club should you choose to buy one.