The legendary Italian manufacturer, Guerciotti, will be available in the US through Planet X in 2012. Planet X will serve as the exclusive North American distributor for the Italian manufacturer’s road, track and cyclo-cross bikes.
Planet X will start with 2 models for each discipline (road, track, ’cross) for a total of six. Each is available now, and Planet X plan to add models as they become available from Italy. Planet X also offer to special order any frame a rider want from the line, now. “We will be expanding it, as of when they come into the UK,” Rick Kirton, of Planet X US told BikeRadar. “We’re hoping to carry the full range buy the summer.”
Guerciotti’s availability has been on and mostly off over the past 10 years, their exposure was likely the highest when American cyclo-crosser, Jonathan page rode for the Selle Italia-Guerciotti squad in the late ’90s. “We want to really push the cyclo-cross side of it, which is one of their main markets,” said Kirton. “Planet X UK have been doing Guerciotti for the last couple of years, and it’s gone really well. So as part of our expansion into the US we’re bringing Guerciotti as well as the house brands of Planet X and Titus. It works quite well, as it gives us the cyclo-cross angle [pedigree] we’ve not got with the others.”
The Guerciotti brand was founded in 1964, and from that inception have been steeped in cyclo-cross. The story starts: when Italo Guerciotti, a noted and expert cyclo-cross rider, decided with his brother Paolo to open a small shop selling and maintaining bicycles in Milan, Italy. The brothers went on to build their own frames under their name.
Current Selle Italia-Guerciotti team rider Elia Silvestri
Guerciotti's racing prestige also lies firmly within the discipline. Cyclo-cross is the passion of Guerciotti’s current director, Paulo, and in 1977 Paolo founded Team GS GUERCIOTTI, which scored 850 professional cyclo-cross victories from 1977 to 2001. During the team’s run, they became a landmark for cyclo-cross in Italy and in the world, earning the nickname of “multinational in the mud” and the “Mapei of Cyclo-cross”. Guerciotti frames have won 10 world championship titles, and spawned the careers of many elite level riders including mountain biker Marco Aurelio Fontana.
Currently, Daniele Pontoni continues to race under the Guerciotti banner—he is the brand's tenth Cyclocross world champion—along with Enrico Franzoi.
