An Old Overlooked Gem From Campagnolo

As a self-described packrat, I have a tendency to keep a lot of things I don't really need on the pretense that they may come in handy someday, or out of the fear that as soon as I get rid of something I'll discover a need for it. Now and then, I'll go through boxes looking for something, and I'll find something else that I forgot I even had. Something like that happened the other day when I uncovered a late-80s Campagnolo Athena derailleur.

After decades of dominating the high-end bicycle component market, Campagnolo in the mid to late '80s was gasping to keep up with the rapid changes that were happening at the time. It must have been a major challenge, considering that for the previous several decades, the company made new product introductions only infrequently, and component models would run for years with only the most minor of changes. Take for example the Nuovo Record derailleur, which was made virtually unchanged from 1967 through the mid '80s, and had a basic design that dated back to 1950.

When Shimano released their indexing Dura-Ace 7400 SIS, it seemed nobody was quite prepared for the fallout. SunTour was struggling to get their own indexing system together. Many European component makers started slipping into obscurity. Campagnolo managed to hang on mainly due to the loyalty of older and more tradition-oriented road cyclists, but despite that loyalty the company was still faced with making some major changes to their product line to bring them into the new modern shifting era.

Campagnolo's first attempt at an indexing system, Synchro, was admirable in that they tried to make indexing work with their existing derailleurs. Unfortunately it didn't actually work that well. As already mentioned, their traditional parallelogram derailleur design essentially dated back to 1950 with only minor changes, and adding a shift lever with built-in "clicks" wasn't enough to make them index reliably. Between 1985 and 1990, the company introduced a number of new component groups, and several completely new derailleur designs - each one different from the next. There was the Croce d'Aune with its unique tie-rod activation, the Chorus with its dropped and slanted 2-position parallelogram, and by the end of the decade there were a couple of mountain bike groups with derailleurs that appeared to be modeled after Shimano Deore, but with Campagnolo aesthetics. In the middle of all that there was the Athena which was introduced in late 1988 and positioned below Chorus. Of the new road derailleur designs, the Athena was probably the derailleur that looked the most traditional -- the most "Campy-like." There was no dropped parallelogram to ape SunTour or Shimano designs. At first glance, some less-savvy observers might have mistaken it for a Campagnolo C-Record, with its smooth polished surfaces, and aero-looking upper derailleur cage. Closer examination would show it to be very different.

No "dropped parallelogram" here. Most modern era derailleurs follow the SunTour and Shimano designs, with the parallelogram dropped below the upper pivot, orienting it more horizontally, and slanted at an angle so it moves downward as it moves inward - tracking the profile of the rear cogs more closely across the range. It isn't obvious from this image, but even though that parallelogram hangs down directly in line with the upper pivot, in traditional Campagnolo style, it is actually canted at an angle so its movement still tracks the cogs more like other modern designs.

The Athena is a smooth and quick-shifting derailleur, and more "modern" in function than it appears. If it didn't index-shift as well as Shimano (and in 1988, nothing indexed as well as Shimano), it probably had more to do with the lack of system integration than with the trend-defying derailleur design itself. After Shimano introduced their SIS, it seemed that companies that first set about trying to imitate it mistakenly believed the key to indexing was mostly in the clicking levers, and the rest of the drivetrain could get by with some minor tweaks. In reality, it was more involved than that. The freewheel cogs had to be precisely spaced to match the indents in the levers, the tooth profiles on each cog had to be optimized to make the shift happen exactly as intended, the chain links needed to be profiled to properly mesh with those cog teeth at the proper moment, and the cables and even the cable housing had to be designed specially to eliminate (or at least minimize) cable stretch or housing compression. It took some time for SunTour to work all that out, and even longer for Campagnolo to do it.

The Athena has another difference that separates it from most other modern designs: no spring in the upper pivot. While a sprung upper pivot can help with indexing, it may not be entirely necessary. But the upper bolt did have an unusual feature to help the derailleur handle different gear ranges:

Instead of a screw to adjust the derailleur angle (typically called the "B-screw" or "B-tension") the Athena used this toothed stop ring that fit around the upper pivot. It had 5 possible positions that were supposed to allow better angle for different sprocket sizes. Notice the guide which shows "Biggest Sprockets" ranging from 20 to 30 teeth. Unfortunately, in my experience, the toothed ring is the Achilles Heel of the Athena. I had one shear off, which let the derailleur swing forward, crashing into the cogs and ending my ride. The piece is replaceable, but not exactly easy to find. And I've seen other used examples of the derailleur out there that were damaged in the same way.

I've used the Athena derailleur with Campagnolo's last version of indexing downtube shift levers, that were made for 7 or 8 speed systems, and it worked well. Just for grins, I tried installing it on a bike with a modern 10-speed cassette and Campy's Ergo shifters. It actually worked alright, though it had some trouble getting to the innermost and outermost cogs -- not a surprise, considering it was never designed to shift across 10 cogs. Nevertheless, I've seen it mentioned on some online forums that people have gotten it to work, so it might just be a matter of spending a little more time fiddling with the adjustments. However, one thing I noticed that might have been contributing to the issue was that it took a little more pressure on the shift levers to move the derailleur -- as if the springs in the derailleur were stronger or stiffer than current models. Newer Campy designs have tried to lighten the shifting "feel" or action to better emulate the light touch of Shimano shifters, and lighter springs are probably part of it. So there's that.

Where the Athena really shines, though, is with friction shifting -- particularly with a set of smooth-acting retrofriction levers, like the Simplex, or Campagnolo's C-Record. With the retrofriction levers, the derailleur has nice feel, and offers quick, smooth shifting.

The Athena design was also released as a lower-end derailleur called the Xenon, with a much more pedestrian painted finish.

I used the Athena for several years on a bike I no longer have -- a late '80s Vitus aluminum -- but it's been sitting unused in a box for a while now. I have no plans to get rid of it though -- who knows when the right bike might come along for it?