dirty sundays

This is Juliana Furtado's original GT XIZANG race bike from the early 1995 season.

The bike must have been produced in 1994, although it has no serial number which makes it impossible to figure out the exact production date. This was most likely a custom frame with a specific geometry for Juli.

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HOW I FOUND IT:

I bought the bike in 2015 on eBay from Marc Gullickson, who's wife Margy rode it occasionally. They had gotten it directly from Juli, when they all were still living in Durango. Marc was a successful pro-racer and former GT team mate of Juli.

 

PARTS:

The bike was left with mostly all the original parts, although they changed the stem and bars for a more comfortable position. It took me a long time to figure out the handlebars, which at the end, thanks to Mark Dawson's photos (www.fattirefotos.com), I found out that they cut out a True Temper frame sticker to use on both sides of the bars. I still don't know for sure what bars she used, although those are True Temper right now.

The wheelset it came with, was a 96' rear wheel and a 97' front wheel, both with M950 hubs.

This bike should have M910 hubs with Mavic SUP 117 rims.

When I took a closer look at her 97' season bike at the MTB Hall of Fame, I realized that it had the exact same wheelset, just the other way around. After about 1.5 years, I finally convinced Joe Breeze that we should swap the front wheels, so their bike is all original again and I have at least 2 matching wheels. 

I don't wanna replace the wheels as those are Juli's original wheels that she raced in 96' and there's a UCI tag on the front hub - now - thanks to Joe. 

Her mechanic at the time, Doug Hatfield mentioned that he custom made her shorter pedal spindles to narrow down the q-factor due to her previous knee injuries from skiing, although the bike came without pedals.

It had newer tires mounted, one of which is an early Specialized Fast Track prototype.

Another detail is that you can still see the marks on the brake levers from the zip ties holding the race numbers as well as marks on the down tube from the crud catcher zip ties. 

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RACES:

She probably first raced it at the Hawaii stage race in January 1995, which she won.

It was also used during the 3 first races of the 1995 World Cup season in Cairns (1st place), Madrid (1st place), Houffalize (3rd place) and possibly Budapest (4th place), according to the photos I found.

Keep in mind that the pro's, especially those at bigger teams, usually had several identical bikes at the same time, although this is the only matching Xizang with the World Champs sticker on the top tube.

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RESULTS:

XC World Champion 1990

DH World Champion 1992

XC World Cup Overall Champion 1993, 1994, 1995

National XC Champion 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995