Eddy Merckx (1967)

Although his tenure with the Peugeot-BP-Michelin team spanned but a brief two years in 1966 and 1967, Eddy Merckx managed to claim wins for the white and black chequerboard twice at Milan - San Remo, twice again in the Trofeo Angelo Baracchi TTT (...with Ferdi Bracke as his teammate on both occasions), as well as Flèche Wallone, Ghent - Wevelgem, the Critérium des As, two stages of the Giro d'Italia, and the World Professional Road Championship - all of which occurred over the course of the 1967 season. While Merckx himself has subsequently written that he rode a stock Peugeot PX-10 throughout 1966 and the early months of 1967, he ultimately became disenchanted with the performance of that model and elected to have Faliero Masi build a “Peugeot type” bicycle using Nervex Dubois lugs which was subsequently painted and decaled in Peugeot-BP-Michelin team livery for use in the latter half of 1967, and it was astride that very bike that he claimed his first UCI World Professional Road Championship at Heerlen, Netherlands. Based upon the particulars in evidence here (...the lack of chrome on the rear stays and front fork, no contrasting Black paint on the lugs, and horizontal slots in the bottom bracket shell), I am inclined to believe that the bicycle seen in this photograph would be a Merckx’s pseudo Peugeot built by Masi and not an actual PX-10.