Campagnolo Bora

Campagnolo’s story starts with a single frozen wingnut. On 11 November 1927, Tullio Campagnolo was racing up the Croce d’Aune climb when he couldn’t loosen his wheel nuts to change gear — the cold had seized them solid. Frustrated, he set about designing something better, and by 1930 had patented the quick-release skewer, a piece of engineering still recognisable in every quick-release wheel today.

Three years later, in 1933, Tullio founded the Campagnolo company in the back room of his father’s hardware store on Corso Padova in Vicenza. Nearly a century on, that same restless refusal to accept “good enough” still runs through the brand — Campagnolo remains an Italian, family-rooted name built on the belief that everything can be improved, from Tullio’s early gear mechanisms through to today’s groupsets and wheels.