CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
Mike Burrows
(9 posts)-
Posted 2 years ago #
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Legend: Mike Burrows, video by @gcntweet
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Video link - https://tinyurl.com/MikeBurrowsLegend
https://mobile.twitter.com/carltonreid/status/1559187691744403456
Posted 2 years ago # -
The British Human Power Club (BHPC), for which Mike did so much, will be most saddened, too.
Mike hadn't been well for some time and stopped racing three or four years ago.
Posted 2 years ago # -
His work for Giant on the modern compact frame design (TCR model) is something not everyone realises. He really did love and look at all areas of creative engineering. Not contactable by email he preferred a phone call and kindly did a couple of crank shortening jobs for LB at a modest cost.
Spoke to him on phone a couple of times when he revamped the BHPC magazine and named it LaidBack Cyclist. Had to take the back page ad for a while alhough never did any races! These generally on old airfields and outdoor tracks down south - Lancaster being the closest. Mike was tough competition using his design and build skills to make his bikes super aero. He offered to help Graeme Obree when he went for the HPV record a few years ago but Graeme was set on going headfirst on his chest.Significant designs were:
Windcheetah trike - first met @Arellcat riding one.
8Freight cargobike - @chdot still has one I think?
Ratracer recumbent although never made in big numbers - first two were licensed - again @arellcat may know more.
A Commute bike with enclosed chainguard was a project he was very keen on.
I did know he was very ill and so sad to hear the news. Feel priviliged to have chatted with him even though we never met.Posted 2 years ago # -
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Burrows had shown his design to Raleigh but faced rejection until his friend Rudy Thoman, who worked for Lotus, saw a prototype hanging on his workshop wall and took it to show the car manufacturer.
‘I’d almost given up,’ says Burrows. ‘Jim Hendry from the British Cycling Federation had taken my original version to the UCI in 1985 to get permission but was rejected. The Lotus name made it work. They wrote to the UCI on Lotus headed paper and it made them feel important so they agreed [in 1990].’
Lotus manufactured the bike, Burrows called Chris Boardman and they were soon in a wind-tunnel refining Boardman’s technique. ‘We were going to the wind-tunnel at midnight because it was cheaper, and Chris was so cold we picked up his shivering on the computer printout.’
He calls the 1992 Olympics his ‘Warhol moment’ and admits he ‘started to well up’ when he watched Boardman clinch Britain’s first Olympics cycling medal for 72 years. ‘It suddenly clicked that they were scratching a name on the wall and making history.’
But Burrows says the cycling federation shunned him. ‘I didn’t get an invite to dinner or anything. They didn’t like it that the bike made the headlines.’
…
‘I always say that bikes are the only piece of sporting kit that has more of a role outside the sport than in it. Tennis rackets, footballs – waste of time. But bicycles make the world a better place.
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https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/10866/mike-burrows-bike-designer-profile
Posted 2 years ago # -
Big loss for the cycling world and the recumbent world in particular.
I didn't ever meet Mike but undoubtedly benefited from the trickle down of his expertise into recumbent design.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Sad news indeed - a modest genius with endearing eccentricities and a great innovater in the recumbent world in recent years
Sadly the Speedy Windcheetah trike i got from Arellcat some years ago got crushed a couple of years ago by a bus unexpectedly pulling onto the roundabout at Regents Road,narrowly missing crunching me as well by a few centimetres
It would not have been the exit i wanted - to be annihilated by a bus from Livingston
However i still have a Windcheetah hypersport trike and i think of Mike whenever I sit in it - mainly because i think the seat was moulded to his body shape and is rather uncomfortable for any one else!
it is a nice connection to have and to feel his spirit live on through his creationPosted 2 years ago # -
Sad news a lovely man to debate with as a fellow engineer
Posted 2 years ago #
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