Post by Adrian on Aug 16, 2022 12:56:45 GMT
Engineer and genius bike designer Mike Burrows died yesterday. I recommend a read of RoadCC's obituary.
I knew him in my recumbent-racing days. I raced his bikes, against him. But, always having built himself something yet more aerodynamic for the latest season, he almost invariably beat me, right up to my retirement from racing, when he was 70 and I was almost 20 years his junior. He carried on achieving high places in recumbent races for several more years.
But your cycling very likely owes him a debt, too. The mainstream cycling world is aware of Mike mostly as the brains behind the machine used by Chris Boardman to win gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (one soon learned not to refer to it as "the Lotus bike" anywhere in Mike's earshot). But if you ride a carbon frame, the TCR geometry invented by Mike for Giant was pivotal in making carbon frames affordable (it meant that far fewer frame sizes, each with specific and expensive tooling, were needed). Even if you ride a road bike in steel, titanium or aluminium, if it has a sloping top tube, that's derived from the TCR concept, too.
The inline cable adjuster: that was one of Mike's, as well...
I knew him in my recumbent-racing days. I raced his bikes, against him. But, always having built himself something yet more aerodynamic for the latest season, he almost invariably beat me, right up to my retirement from racing, when he was 70 and I was almost 20 years his junior. He carried on achieving high places in recumbent races for several more years.
But your cycling very likely owes him a debt, too. The mainstream cycling world is aware of Mike mostly as the brains behind the machine used by Chris Boardman to win gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (one soon learned not to refer to it as "the Lotus bike" anywhere in Mike's earshot). But if you ride a carbon frame, the TCR geometry invented by Mike for Giant was pivotal in making carbon frames affordable (it meant that far fewer frame sizes, each with specific and expensive tooling, were needed). Even if you ride a road bike in steel, titanium or aluminium, if it has a sloping top tube, that's derived from the TCR concept, too.
The inline cable adjuster: that was one of Mike's, as well...