Kurt Ott Pista “Hans Pfenninger”, 1940s, Switzerland
History & Specifications
The framebuilder of this frame is unknown. At the end of the 1940s the fork was replaced by one built by Kurt Ott and the frame was repainted in the Kurt Ott team color scheme. The track bike was raced in the mid 1940s by an uncle of young Fritz Pfenninger. His name was Corrodi. Around 1946 Pfenniger started to participate track races. Soon he was recognized to be very talented and was invited to paricipate the Swiss National pursuit team. In 1948 they participated at the Olympic Games in London and 1952 in Helsinki. Both times they ranked the 8. place. In 1952 Pfenninger won the Swiss Championship on his track bike. That the frame bears also a Tigra headbadge was explained by Pfenninger. From time to time Tigra factory Maschinenfabrik Gränichen supported him with spare parts or silk tubulars, so the frame was branded with the Tigra badge.
The track bike was in 2010 discovered in a storage room under the track of the Offene Rennbahn Oerlikon and brought back to be raced again. The rusty handlebar was chrome stripped, then I a hole Sunday treated with sandpaper, then polished and rechromed. The cotton cloth handlebar tape and a set of new tubulars were the mounted. Otherwise the Kurt Ott Pista in original condition.
This unique historic Kurt Ott Pista bicycle is presented in the premium book «kick into next gear» in great detail.
Frame size seat tube 58 cm center–top, top tube 58.3 cm center–center, weight 8.9 kg