Bike Check: Romario’s Colnago USSR Master Pursuit Pista

Jun 23

By Paul.D

Colnago Master Pursuit Pista USSR Campagnolo FIR jumbo

There are plenty of people who consider themselves bike collectors, each for their own reasons. Maybe it’s the way a bike looks, the way it rides, the history behind it, or maybe it’s just the joy of collecting for collecting’s sake. But what always impresses me about Romario is the sheer depth of knowledge he has about every single bike in his collection.

A few weeks ago, I shared his Colnago Oval CX Pista, a bike with quite the backstory. So today, we’re looking at the second Colnago in his collection, and while it might not come with the craziest history, it’s packed with enough unique features to make it well worth a closer look.

Let’s start with a bit of history. During the late Cold War years, particularly in the 1980s, leading up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, something interesting happened. Despite Italy’s NATO alignment, it maintained a pragmatic, business-driven relationship with the USSR, especially when it came to high-end sports equipment. Colnago, already established as a major supplier for elite teams around the world, somehow found its way into Soviet cycling. How, you may ask? Italian doing Italian things is probably the best way to describe it.

And that’s how we got the Colnago Master Pursuit Pista “USSR Edition”. With rumors of no more than a dozen ever made, this bike is an interesting blend of two worlds colliding. On one hand, you had Colnago’s signature crimped Gilco tubing, bent into wild curves and welded by some of the most skilled Italian framebuilders of the era. On the other, the fork-mounted aerobar setup, was an experimental configuration that was more and more popular in the Eastern Bloc at the time.

The super low riding position created by this design, combined with the
”curvaceous” shape of the FIR Jumbo 2 front wheel, was all about minimizing aerodynamic drag. At least, that was the theory.

Thanks to modern testing methods, many of those claims have been completely debunked. It turns out that a lot of these radical setups offered little to no real performance gains… Going reasonably fast, but looking damn good doing it.

Detailed Parts List

Frameset
Colnago USSR Master Pursuit Pista

Chainring and Cog Colnago pantographed chainring

Crank Campagnolo Pista crank

Seatpost and Saddle
Sella Italia Bio Turbo Saddle, Campagnolo anniversary seatpost

Handlebar
Titanium forkmount bars

Wheels 650c Front FIR Jumbo 2
700c Rear FIR Halley

All of this makes the Colnago a true historical artifact, and an elegant display of how far cycling technology has come. The tubing, position, and parts selection, which today might seem stylish but a bit absurd, were all necessary steps in pushing bike design to what we know. And I feel like this is the theme at the heart of Romario’s bike collection: necessary design steps.