Bike Check: Romario’s Textima Sprint Track
It’s time for this month’s history lesson! And even though we’re still admiring Romario’s collection, we should start by going back in time to truly understand what’s up with this beautiful Textima Sprint Track.
First things first: even though there’s a big “Textima” on the downtube (stickers kindly supplied by the German track bike expert a.k.a @steel_buddie), this bike was, technically speaking, built by INBIKE. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, INBIKE acquired Textima and continued using their designs and tubing for a while, and that explains the “Made by INBIKE” decal on the top tube, making this frame either and both. Kind of funky but not a first in the cycling industry.
If you know anything about vintage German track bikes used by pro teams, you know how hard they are to come by. Some companies, like FES, are technically government-owned, and every FES bike you see outside of their Berlin facility has, let’s say, “slipped through the cracks” of German bureaucracy. So when this one popped up on a German marketplace, Romario went as far as video calling the seller to make sure to have the entire back storie.
This Textima is the literal embodiment of Soviet design during the GDR era. A mysterious and captivating cultural, historical, and socio-economic period where design was driven solely by efficiency, brutalism, and that intangible something only objects from that time seem to possess. You see it in the architecture, in camera, lens design, and, of course, in cycling.
At first glance, this frame might seem to carry the elegance of Italian manufacturing. But look closer, and you’ll realize that this powerful stance speaks a very different language.
Detailed Parts List
Frameset
Textima Sprint Track
Chainring and Cog 48T Sugino Mighty, 16T Cog
Crank Sugino 75
Seatpost and Saddle
Gass carbon kevlar seatpost, Selle Italia Evo 2 saddle
Steam and Handlebar
FES carbon monocoque aero pursuit bars
Wheels
Wolber/Corima 4 Spokes Front, and Wolber discjet Discwheel rear
Even though the welds are slim, perfectly executed, and the wishbone seatstay oozes elegance, the rest of the bike is a brutalist, almost barbarous, mix of oversized tubing and structural reinforcements. The down tube, already oversized and gusseted at the head tube, wasn’t enough, so they added yet another brace at the bottom bracket area, combined with box-section chainstays. This is a clear statement of the industrial design philosophy meant to serve the powerhouse riders of the GDR cycling team.
And that’s the theme of this build: “Brutal Elegance”, a perfectly balanced contrast between refinement and Soviet engineering. But what if we pushed it even further?Well, carbon is the perfect material for that. The wild curves made possible by 3D molds versus the rigid, planar forms of sandwich composite construction, combined with the extreme strength of the material versus the delicate, tightly woven skin that contains it. Carbon was the answer for the rest of this build.
What truly brought together this bike is a series of carbon components that speak to this duality, refined and raw! A Wolber/Corima four-spoke front wheel, thick and teardrop-shaped, contrasts beautifully with the Wolber DiscJet at the rear, with its flat, aggressive profile. Miraculously, the decals even match the red accents of the carbon kevlar seatpost and saddle. I mean… who doesn’t like a little call back to the red-yellow-black combo on the German flag.
And finally, this FES carbon monocoque handlebar is the eye candy of the build. Wild in shape, rare in existence, also from the GDR era, this is what I call a superb setup!
Bring back brutalist design!
🎞: Kodak Color Plus 200
📷: Leica M6
📍: Hong Kong
