THE
JAEGHER
STORY
To understand a Jaegher, you have to go back.
Back to the roads where the craft was forged, to a workshop that built frames for champions, and to the near-loss that makes every Jaegher we build today what it is.
the old roads
Modern road racing was forged in Flanders, on cobbles and farm tracks rough enough to snap a frame in half. On roads like these, a rider who could not trust his steel could not win. So generation after generation, riders quietly set their team-issued frames aside and rode something better, built by the few craftsmen whose work could survive the pave.
Those builders won races the world never saw their name on. One of them was Vaneenooghe.
the frames EDDY merckx trusted
It began with a racer. Odiel Van Eenooghe turned professional in 1930 and, when his career ended, opened a bike shop in Ruiselede. His sons learned framebuilding from a master of the trade and, in 1960, set up the Vaneenooghe workshop. For the next three decades it supplied the professional peloton, almost always under other brands' names.
Eddy Merckx rode frames built in Ruiselede, and came by in person to inspect the work. Sean Kelly and Michel Pollentier raced on the same steel. Some of the greatest names in the sport won on frames made by hands that never got the credit.
nearly lost
Then everything changed. Cheap mass production frames flooded the market, and the workshops that had built champions were pushed to the edge. For years, Vaneenooghe kept going on general welding work.
The craft that had shaped the peloton was almost gone.
In 2012 a new name appeared: Jaegher. It was not an outsider's idea dropped onto a workshop. It started with Diel Vaneenooghe, Kurt Stallaert, Steven Ledoux, Gwenn Nevelsteen and Christophe Ghewy.
The Vaneenooghe DNA and know-how were built into the company from day one. Four generations of framebuilding, the same hands that had welded for the peloton, now welding under a new name.
Where the industry was chasing carbon, moulded by the thousand in a handful of factories, Jaegher went the other way. It took the old craft and set it to the finest steel made, tailored to one rider at a time. The workshop moved to Gent. The standard did not move at all.
the name and the mark
Jaegher means hunter. It is exactly what we love to do on a race cycle: hunt down that small moving point up ahead. Spoken aloud it sounds like Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, and that is no accident. Iconic geometric shapes in shining steel, built for record performances. It is why every model carries the name of a jet: Interceptor, Phoenix, Hurricane, Typhoon. Other brands name their bikes after our cobbles and our bergs. We looked up instead.
The same idea is worked into the logo. Look closely and you will see the shape of a race handlebar in the letters. The circles in the icon carry two meanings at once: the different tube diameters that go into a frame, and a nod to a fighter pilot's sight, and to the pull every rider knows to hunt down the one in front.
one frame at a time
Every Jaegher still begins the way those frames always did. Not from a size chart, but from a welding plan drawn to your measurements, your geometry, your riding. The tubes are Columbus steel, drawn in Italy: XCr stainless and Spirit steel, quick and responsive, and built to last a lifetime.
Italian steel, Flemish hands. Cut, mitered, welded, finished, and assembled by hand, one frame at a time, in Gent.
italian steel, flemish hands
Every Jaegher still begins the way those frames always did. Not from a size chart, but from a welding plan drawn to your measurements, your geometry, your riding. The tubes are Columbus steel, drawn in Italy: XCr stainless and Spirit steel, quick and responsive, and built to last a lifetime.
Italian steel, Flemish hands. Cut, mitered, welded, finished, and assembled by hand, one frame at a time, in Gent.
still the choice of champions
The riders who know still choose Jaegher. Tom Boonen fell for his before he became a partner. Tim Merlier crossed the line first on his Jaegher Hurricane to take the Belgian beach race title.
And Kristof Allegaert has won the Transcontinental three times, twice on a Jaegher Interceptor, across some of the hardest ultra-distance racing there is.
The steel that won on the old roads keeps winning. When you ride a Jaegher, you ride that whole lineage with you.
Take your place in this lineage
Book an introduction call, at our atelier or online,
and we will design the next Jaegher around you.