Breitling has honoured cycling legend Eddy Merckx with the Top Time B01 Eddy Merckx, a yellow-dial chronograph that gives the brand’s cycling series its biggest name yet. Last year Breitling turned the Top Time into a cycling tribute with a pair of chronographs honouring the Coppi-Bartali rivalry. This year the series welcomes the Belgian whom Breitling, with little fear of contradiction, calls the greatest rider the sport has produced – and it does so with a single, well-chosen colour: yellow.
For anyone who doesn’t follow cycling as closely as they might an F1 Grand Prix, yellow is the colour of the Maillot Jaune, the Yellow Jersey worn by the leader of the Tour de France – and no one has worn it longer than Merckx, whose record 96 days in yellow still stands – hence the yellow dial. The numbers behind it are just as striking: 525 career victories, five Tours de France, a record seven Milan-San Remo wins, and five Giro d’Italia titles – a record he shares with Fausto Coppi, subject of one of last year’s editions. That 525 figure is the key to the watch. The Breitling Top Time B01 Eddy Merckx is limited to 525 pieces, one for every win, and each caseback is engraved “One of 525.”
The dial is the draw: bright yellow set off by silver counters in the squircle shape that has become a Top Time signature, a tachymeter scale tracing the perimeter, and Merckx’s own signature sitting at 6 o’clock. Super-LumiNova on the hour and minute hands keeps it legible after dark, and period-style mushroom pushers handle the chronograph’s start, stop, and reset functions. Flip it over and a sapphire window set into the screwed steel caseback frames the movement, with an “Eddy Merckx Tribute” inscription.
At 41mm diameter and 13.3mm thick, the steel case is moderately sized for a chronograph, with 100m water resistance secured via a gasket-sealed crown. The design is completed by a cambered, double-anti-reflective sapphire on top. Inside is Breitling’s in-house Manufacture Calibre B01, a column-wheel, vertical-clutch chronograph that’s certified by the COSC (Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres) and good for roughly 70 hours of power reserve. Buyers choose between a black perforated calfskin strap (ref. AB01762C1I1X1) and a steel mesh bracelet (ref. AB01762C1I1A1).
It’s priced at £6,600 on bracelet and £6,200 on strap, matching the Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali editions that were also £6,200. What the Merckx edition really confirms though, is that the Top Time cycling line is a full on sub-series rather than a one-off pair – Coppi and Bartali last year, Merckx now. A pantheon naming three of the sport’s greats in two years invites the obvious question: who should Breitling honour next?
Price and Specs:
More details at Breitling.
