See it’s what’s old is new in cycling – Valentino Zippicelli had some seriously deep wheels back in the day. Possibly made from wood or is that ceramic? Looks like a giant, flat clay bowl with a tire glued on it.
Wonder if Hed has Zippy’s photo up in their wind tunnel? Had the Zipper known more about Aero, I bet he’d have worn a finely-shaped watermelon on his head.
Uploaded by fixedgear | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Follow us on Twitter
Fan us on Facebook
Suffer Faces on Tumblr
Picking on Mulu
Find us on Instagram
Read us on Android and iOS with the Currents app
Subscribe on Kindle 
They’re balsa wood! I almost sent you a link to the story about it—it was on a story about wheel tech and they mentioned these as used in the 1929 tour de france. I can’t find a link to the story though right now…
Excellent: light and fast. If you find that link, link it up!
Here it is
I read this yesterday on Bike Radar. They almost got me.
awesome—I think though that was made from aged pasta, no? And Zippicelli looks remarkably like Tom Ritchey. Fixed Gear backs tells more of the legend of Zippicelli in [a blog post](http://fixedgearbikes.blogspot.com/2009/04/legend-of-zippicelli.html).