Jeanne (Robinson) Omelenchuk’s custom 1960 road racing bike
Omelenchuk road bike
This is another bike that was made by George Omelenchuk for his wife Jeanne, an Olympic-level champion cyclist and speedskater.
Check out the other two Omelenchuks in this museum section. Go ahead. We’ll wait.
Notice a trend here? It probably goes without saying, but Jeanne must have been pretty special to George. Nothing looks easy on any of these bikes. It seems that George went out of his way to fabricate every last bit of Jeanne’s bikes from scratch, or at least give everything a custom touch or two.
Campagnolo version Brooks saddle
Campagnolo smooth pulley derailleur
One of the notable features on this bike is the finish. This is a chromed steel bicycle, but it doesn’t look like any typical bit of chromed steel. Instead of polishing the chrome to a mirror finish (as is typical), Omelenchuk left most of the chrome plating in the natural pebbled state that occurs midway through the chroming process, and then completed the look with pin striping around the lugs and select polishing.
Custom stem and bars
Campagnolo crankset
The wheels are customized for Jeanne and very hand-made. Not just pick-out-the-parts-and-lace-them-up hand made either. George cast the aluminum hub shells himself, producing hubs that were extremely wide by the standards of the day (heck, they’re wide by today’s standards, and we pack 11 cogs onto modern rear hubs). The rims were drawn or rolled or whatever the term is by George himself, and were lightened up for Jeanne with 32 half-inch holes machined out of the rim walls between each spoke eyelet. The spokes may be off the shelf (George made his own spokes for Jeanne’s track bike), we can’t be certain. We are certain that the spokes are wire-tied at each crossing and soldered for extra rigidity.
Extra-wide rear hub
Rims with weight-reducing holes
We have seen a lot of really great work by bike mechanics and wheel builders over the years. Cees Beers did some amazing things with his ADA wheels starting in the mid ’90’s, building custom carbon-fiber wheels for clients like Bjarne Riis or Jan Uhlrich. Master builders (and former race circuit pros) like Calvin Jones at Park Tools or Ric Hjertberg from Wheelsmith were the best. But these guys all look lazy compared to George Omelenchuk. George would take materials that were already on the cutting edge of technology, re-work the material and design from scratch, just to squeeze a little more performance out of them for just one rider.