The Campagnolo Triomphe was a strangely charmless object, created to replace the well loved Campagnolo Nuovo Gran Sport with a derailleur with a more 1980s style. But somehow, while the Nuovo Gran Sport had a certain effortless classicism, the Triomphe was ungainly, uncomposed and simply ugly.

The Triomphe was a confusing design. Firstly, it was not noticeably better finished than the, cheaper, 980 and then 990. Secondly the 980/990, the Triomphe and the more expensive Campagnolo Victory, oddly, all weighed the same amount. Thirdly the Triomphe had a steel inner pulley cage plate, whereas the cheaper 980 and 990 had aluminium inner pulley cage plates. And fourthly and finally, all three derailleurs had very different outer pulley cage plate designs. Campagnolo had made a lot of noise about how the Campagnolo Super Record (4001) had a superior pulley cage design to the Campagnolo Nuovo Record (1020/A), but then undermined this whole narrative by using seemingly random pulley cage designs on its next generation of derailleurs.

But most of all Campagnolo made no attempt to move on from the fundamental geometry of Nuovo Record. In 1985 Shimano had launched the Shimano Dura-Ace 7400, a beautifully finished, fully indexed, slant-parallelogram, derailleur, with two sprung pivots - rendering the Triomphe obsolete at birth.

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This example is the first iteration of the Triomphe design. Like its elder brother, the 1984 Campagnolo Victory, this model is sometimes referred to as 'Triomphe Corsa' as it is kind-of-labelled as such in Campagnolo's catalogue n. 18 bis. That catalogue gives it the part number 0102055. As with the 1985 Campagnolo Victory, the key distinguishing features are the plastic layer embedded in the outer parallelogram plate to prevent the adjustment screws from loosening, and the stainless steel insert on the inside of the outer pulley cage plate.

Some key features of this first style of Triomphe are:

• The 'flying quick release' logo on the outer parallelogram plate.
• An outer pulley cage plate with an extravagant 'pusher plate' area around the guide pulley. This 'pusher plate' has a stainless steel insert on the inside.
• An steel inner pulley cage plate.
• Phillips head pulley bolts inserted from the inside, with hex nuts on the outside.
• Slotted, headless adjustment screws, with a plastic thread-locking layer.
• A distinctively shaped cable clamp nut as also seen on the Campagnolo 980.

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• Derailleur brands: Campagnolo
• Categories: Campagnolo - defeat snatched from the jaws of Victory
• Country: Italy
• Date of introduction: 1984
• Date of this example: unknown
• Model no.: 0102055
• Weight: 199g
• Maximum cog: 28 teeth (bike shop folklore, although I am not sure why!)
• Total capacity: 28 teeth (bike shop folklore, although I am not sure why!)
• Pulley centre to centre: 46mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: largely aluminium, with a steel inner pulley cage plate and a stainless steel insert in the outer pulley cage plate