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And the rest, as they say, is history.Shared Micromobility Permitting, Process, and Participation They formed a friendship and later that year when Christian and Amber opened The Service Course Girona, Mattia was asked if he’d like to sell his frames through the shop. Christian had asked his team (Orica-GreenEdge) if he could ride something different to his team-issue Scott, to which they agreed, so Mattia built the frame based off Christian’s measurements and then joined Christian and the team in Manchester to play mechanic and watch the racing. The races would be part of the Revolution Series, held in the Manchester velodrome.
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In 2016, Mattia was contacted by Christian Meier who was looking to have a track frame built for the final two races of his professional cycling career.
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He has competed in (and regularly podiumed at) the Spanish Cup series in cyclocross, raced the singlespeed CX World Championships in Belgium last year, finished fourth at the singlespeed Mountain Bike World Championships in Italy, and came second in the Catalan Championships in CX this year. Mattia is no slouch on the bike, by the way. He limited the number of frame orders he took, began entering cyclocross and mountain bike races, and living (and loving) the sport he’d fallen in love with years earlier. He decided that instead of burning out like he’d done with skateboarding, he wanted to continue the journey of frame building. If Mattia’s skateboarding days had taught him anything, it was that Barcelona was the world’s best city for skateboarding and fixie culture, so when the time came to move in 2014, Barcelona was the obvious choice for he and Franka.īetween 20 Mattia built over 120 bicycles from his new workshop, before realising that he missed riding and racing. In 2012 Mattia met another Italian frame builder, Tiziano Zullo, whom he worked with for two years, refining his craft at a technical level, before looking to make a big life change in his late 20s. In 2012, JT won MonsterTrack on a Legor, and Mattia’s popularity as a frame builder rose further still. Mattia worked tirelessly to build four bikes to take to Austin for the show, and afterwards the bikes were raced on by John-Taki and David Trimble (Red Hook Criterium organiser). MonsterTrack was, at the time, the most famous of all alleycat races in the world, held on the streets of New York City. The trip was paid for by MonsterTrack rider, John-Taki Theodoracopulus (JT). In 2011, Mattia was invited to the North American Handbuilt Bike Show in Austin, Texas. In 2010, Basque rider Jon Ander Ortuondo won the first European Red Hook Criterium on a Legor, with Mattia shouting from the sidelines. Mattia’s background in fixie riding gave him an insight into the kinds of steel bikes people wanted to ride, and he built bikes accordingly - straight lines and aggressive geometries, no nonsense. Gino took Mattia under his wing and soon Mattia was making frames for himself, alleycat-racing clients, and his soon-to-be wife, Franka, who he’d met in a skate shop a couple of years prior.
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He visited the workshop of Gino Lissignoli and asked to be taught how to weld. He’d seen beautiful artisanal track frames being ridden in the alleycat races, and even though he had no prior experience with welding, he’d always enjoyed building things by hand. In 2008, as a 23 year old, Mattia became interested in the art of frame building.

The races would get upwards of 100 participants all charging through the streets - fixed gear bikes only, no brakes allowed, and just pure, beer-filled adrenaline.
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In the mid-2000s Italy was experiencing a huge fixed-gear movement, largely driven by illegal alleycat racing happening in cities such as Turin and Milan. He began hanging out with bike messengers and fixie racers - a group of hard-core street riders who saw cycling more like skateboarding: fast, loose and a counterculture to the lycra-clad, carbon-driven sport that was road riding. After 11 years skating, Mattia’s once-obsessive interest in the sport began to wane and he moved onto riding fixed gear bikes. As a child Mattia rode bikes and skateboarded, eventually dedicating his late teens and early 20s to traveling the world for his many skateboarding sponsors, including Nike Italia.

Mattia Paganotti was born in Brescia, in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy, near Lake Garda and the beautiful Italian Alps.
