LegendMaster frame builder Marco Bertoletti used to create bicycles

for some of Europe’s best-known brands. These days he’ll make one just for you – for a price. Cyclist visits the Legend

factory in Italy, where bikes get the personal touchWords Wesley Doyle Photography FreD MacGreGor

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I f you want a suit to fit perfectly, you go to a bespoke tailor. If you want a suit to fit perfectly and look stylish, you go to a bespoke tailor in Italy. So it is with bikes. If you’ve got the measurements and the money, you can have a bike

made that will fit you better than an Armani suit, and in Bergamo, near Milan, is a frame builder who will provide a made-to-measure bike with pure Italian flair.

Marco Bertoletti has the classic look of an Italian pro cyclist – tanned and sinewy – with only the grey around his temples giving a hint of his 55 years. In his early teens he raced as an amateur, but bowing to pressure from his father to either study or find a trade, he started in the bike industry as a frame builder. He was quickly promoted to head of production, but his latent ambition led him to launch MB bikes in 1983.

MB designed and built frames for some well-known brands and, although confidentiality agreements prevent him from revealing exactly which ones, Bertoletti hints that they were ‘massive European companies all in the pro peloton of the day’. And it soon becomes clear why he decided to set up Legend in 2009: ‘Nine of us worked from dawn to dusk to produce 2,800 frames a year that were then shipped to other companies for them to put their names

on,’ he says. Bertoletti’s expression displays that this state of affairs wasn’t entirely satisfactory.

Professional pride aside, the birth of Legend was a reaction to the way that bike manufacturing was heading five or six years ago. ‘For the longest time all the professionals rode aluminium frames,’ says Bertoletti. ‘Then slowly carbon came into play and for 18 months it was half aluminium and half carbon. Then in 2005, around the time of Giant introducing sloping frames for Jan Ullrich and the German Telekom team, bikes went totally carbon and literally everyone moved production to the Far East.

‘Orders for the Italian and continental companies I made frames for fell away virtually overnight so I decided that it was time for me to do my own. I could’ve done what a lot of other people did and close my factory, sell the machinery and go and work for a company as head of production. But I didn’t want to stop

being a frame builder – I wanted to show I could still build special bikes. That was the start of Legend. There are now only a handful of Italian frame builders who still hand-make in Italy.’

The old waysWhen pushed to describe the bikes he makes, Bertoletti will just say that they’re ‘custom-made but beautiful’. Many of the carbon frames are left bare of paint, so the attention to detail is there to see. ‘My frames are my children,’ he laughs. ‘I made them and I put part of myself into each frame. I never copy anyone and pay little attention to trends. I always make frames out of me.’

This isn’t old-school traditional frame building – Bertoletti is keen on innovation. He works in titanium and aluminium as well as carbon, and has designed his own dropouts, squared-off bottom bracket shells, internal cable housings and single-piece milled head tubes in his attempt to refine the ‘perfect machine’.

‘Normally when I’m out riding, something will occur to me and I’ll come back to the factory and tinker with my own bike and see if it works,’ he says. ‘Luckily most things work – if they didn’t I probably wouldn’t be here as the first bike any innovations go on is my own!’

Despite wanting to innovate when it comes to production, Bertoletti still does the fabrication

using his hands and the tools that he’s had for years. ‘We don’t have the same technology as the huge companies who mass-produce. When they make a monocoque frame it’s 80% technology and 20% manuality [sic]. With Legend, the percentages are reversed – I use my hands to make these bikes.’

Bertoletti feels that there is a certain amount of smoke and mirrors when it comes to the constant pushing of technologically-enhanced improvements with futuristic terminology. ‘If a customer weighs 65kg and another weighs 90kg and they’re sold the same bike, how are they being served by technology?’ he says. ‘Super high modulus carbon, 20% more rigidity… companies use these terms because they sound good but many customers don’t know what they mean and for the most part they don’t need it anyway.’

At the Legend factory bike frames are everywhere, but unlike the factories of the

bigger names, each one is unique, with different geometries and a variety of colour schemes and decals. These are one-off frames built for individual riders.

Bertoletti has a nice line in analogies when it comes to describing what’s so different about what he does. ‘It’s like cooking a meal,’ he says. ‘You may well have the best ingredients but that doesn’t guarantee you a nice meal. You need to know about technique and presentation if you’re going to do those ingredients justice and create something really special.

‘It’s not about getting the best titanium tubes in the world and then welding them,’ he says. ‘It’s about how you put them together, where you weld them, how you polish them, what effort you put into it. It’s the hands that make the frame and that is what you pay for with Legend.’

Bertoletti has views about giving customers the right tool for the job too – rather than what P

Above: Marco Bertoletti designs

every Legend bike himself and

overseas each stage of manufacture

Left: Junior frame builder Daniele

edges a frame towards completion

Previous page: A bespoke carbon

frame awaits its turn to be baked in

the autoclave

‘Building a bike is like cooking. you may well have the best ingredients but that doesn’t guarantee you a nice meal’

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the pro peleton or market forces dictate. ‘You don’t buy a Ferrari to go and get your bread from the local bakers,’ he says. ‘Each material has its own customer. Look at a gran fondo, for example. The first 100 riders that finish will have been riding to win, so super-lightweight carbon is the material of choice for them. The next 500, if you gave them a lightweight carbon bike they wouldn’t notice much difference in speed but they’d struggle with it: a responsive bike needs a strong rider. A carbon bike might suit some of them but they shouldn’t restrict their options. With the rest of the riders, the slower ones who are going to be in the saddle for longer will find a carbon bike of any sort uncomfortable and they wouldn’t see the benefits. For them it’s better to use steel, titanium or aluminium. Ride the right material for you.’

Plus, as Bertoletti says, it’s not just about the weight: ‘The obsession with lightness isn’t going to help you if you weigh 90kg. For those serious about racing, carbon is the best – light, easy, reactive – but when it comes to making a beautiful bike, titanium is unbeatable. You can have ten different carbon bikes and they’d all look like painted boxes, but there’s something special, elegant with titanium. It’s comfortable and aesthetically unbeatable. Steel has more or less the same characteristics as titanium and is

obviously heavier but it comes at a better price.’Once a customer’s needs and measurements

are ascertained, the tubes are created in the factory (or ordered, depending on material choice), and then assembled on a computerised jig to the required angles by Giovanni, Bertloletti’s brother-in-law and one of the five Legend staff, which also includes his wife. His frame builders have been with him from one to 22 years, the youngest being Daniele, who like Bertoletti is an ex-junior level racer following the path of the frame builder.

Everyone has a specific job to do in the workshop although each stage is overseen by Bertoletti, who also signs off every bike. If the frame is titanium or steel, it will be welded in the inner chamber of a vacuum tent to produce strong, contaminant-free welds. If it’s carbon, the frame is baked in an autoclave to force out the excess resin. Whatever the material, the joints

are sanded and polished to create an incredibly smooth finish, a process that takes more time than the actual making of the frame.

The only part of the process that’s completed off-site is the painting. ‘There are a lot of EU rules about how you apply paint in factories,’ says Ali Katir, sales manager for Zetta Distribution, the company that brought Legend to the UK. ‘So we have a painter who we use exclusively on our frames. Like the frame building the painting is also done by a human hand, not a robot.’ However, the feeling at Legend is its frames are best unpainted. ‘Anyone can make a beautiful painted frame,’ says Katir, ‘But making bare carbon look good shows real skill and quality.’

Bertoletti will then put the groupset on himself and build the frame. If you’ve decided to go to Bergamo to pick the bike up in person, you can take it out for its first ride straight from the factory itself. In total you’re looking at 50 to 60 working days for production, with frame prices starting from around £2,000.

While Katir maintains that, despite the price, there’s no typical Legend customer, what is obvious is that people who buy Legend are part of a growing number of cyclists who are using their bikes as a personal statement rather than just imitating what they see in the pro peloton. ‘Our customers buy their bikes for themselves,’

he adds, ‘not for showing off to other people. It’s personal, which is why they go for bespoke. The options are endless with Legend – the only thing we don’t do is monocoque frames and we don’t have any plans to do so.’

The personal touchLike all businesses involved in the world of cycling, Legend has enjoyed the benefits of the upswing in the sport’s popularity. When asked what he thinks of the current high profile of cycling, Bertoletti is emphatic. ‘Finally!’ he says. ‘At last people have woken up to a sport that’s exciting, varied and good for you. It initially costs you [for the bike] but after that you can go wherever you want to for free. Progress has given us trains, cars and motorbikes but it all comes back to the noblest invention, the bicycle!’

Bertoletti returns to gastronomic analogies when discussing how his competitors have

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‘Progress has given us trains, cars and motorbikes but it all comes back to the noblest invention – the bicycle!’

complete legends Finished bikes in all their glory

CarbonAt the top of Legend’s carbon range is the HT 10.5 (pictured). Every part of it is designed and layed up to the customer’s dimensions and requirements in the company’s top-end 1K carbon. Below the HT 10.5 comes the 9.5, 7.5, 5.7 and 4.7, where different grades of carbon and levels of customisation affect the final price, weight and stiffness of the frame. Prices start from around £2,000 for the HT 4.7 frameset and go up to £5,000 for the 10.5. Better save those pennies.

TitaniumThe Legend range includes three titanium models. The Il Re (pictured) is pure grade 9 titanium with hand-polished welds that make them virtually invisible. The top-of- the-range Queen includes a carbon seat tube integrated into the titanium frame to improve comfort, while the Prince uses grade 9 and 2 titanium to keep the price in check. If titanium proves too costly, Legend also produces bespoke bikes in steel. Prices for Legend titanium framesets range from £2,000 to £6,000.

A titanium frame sits in the computerised

jig, apparently one of only three in the world and the only one in use

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reacted to this golden age of cycling. ‘When the meatball is small you can divide it between the few people who really like meatballs,’ he says. ‘When it gets bigger though a lot more people think they should have a piece and it becomes more difficult to divide.’

Bertoletti still rides virtually every day on one of his own bikes – a titanium Queen (see box). ‘I’m a complete rider,’ he says, ‘I go slowly over all terrains!’ He’s also more than happy to stay in Bergamo and for Legend to remain a small concern albeit one that means a lot to those who know about it.

‘I don’t want Legend to be big and I don’t want to work anywhere else. If I moved production it wouldn’t be Legend by Marco Bertoletti, it would have to be called something else. ‘I love what I do,’ he continues. ‘I’m not doing this because I have to and if I handed it over to someone else I would truly miss it. If I was after money I’d have to build frames in the Far East and I’d just put decals on them and put the money in the bank.’ Instead it seems Bertoletti just wants to build the best bikes he can.

‘A lot of companies say, “We make the lightest, the fastest, the best,”’ he says, ‘but where do these claims come from? It’s the companies

themselves that are saying it! I don’t want to tell people I make the best bikes in the world, I’d rather other people told me that I do. This is the difference in buying a generic product and buying a Legend. If you buy a generic frame from a big company, who are you going to call if the bike is no good? If you want to talk to me about your bike, I say phone me up [if you speak Italian] or email me. I am available and I am accountable. My satisfaction doesn’t come from how much money is in the bank; it comes from how happy my customers are.’

And what about that name? When half the cycling world is trying to tap into Italy’s heritage, here a true Italian master frame builder has used a very English word under which to trade his wares. ‘Even some Far Eastern companies are trying to sound Italian,’ he says, ‘but you can’t just add the Italian love of cycling to a product by giving it an Italian-sounding name.’

Legend, he says, encompasses his vision of what a bike should be. There’s also another reason he hasn’t named the company after himself: ‘I think for some people my name is a little bit too Italian,’ he laughs.Wesley Doyle is a freelance writer and a legend in his own household

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‘I don’t say I make the best bikes in the world, I’d rather other people told me’

Daniele uses carefully shaped carbon wraps to reinforce joints in order to suit the proposed use of the bike and the weight of the rider

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