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 early Triomphes had a steel inner pulley cage plate, whereas the cheaper 980 and 990 had aluminium inner pulley cage plates. And fourthly and finally, the early versions of 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 third iteration of the Triomphe design. The pulley cage plates were extensively redesigned with an aluminium the inner pulley cage plate, and, combined with the Phillips head adjustment screws, the whole design felt more composed. It was introduced in the 1986 Campagnolo - Nuovo Victory, Nuovo Triomphe catalogue - and so is sometimes called the 'Nuovo Triomphe'.

Some key features of this third style of Triomphe are:

• The 'flying quick release' logo on the outer parallelogram plate.
• An outer pulley cage plate with a small but perfectly formed 'pusher plate' area around the guide pulley.
• An aluminium inner pulley cage plate.
• Allen key pulley bolts inserted from the outside.
• Adjustment screws with small (5mm diameter) Phillips heads.
• 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: 1986
• Date of this example: unknown
• Model no.: unknown
• Weight: 196g
• Maximum cog: 30 teeth (Source: Campagnolo)
• Total capacity: 32 teeth (Source: Campagnolo), although I don't quite believe it
• Pulley centre to centre: 46mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: aluminium