'Mike was never shy to say he was the world’s greatest bicycle designer; nobody paying attention would ever doubt it.' Remembering the pioneering bicycle designer Mike Burrows, who died yesterday. cycling
I first came into contact with Mike Burrows in 2013 when his friend Richard Ballantine died. The publication I was working for at the time wanted an obituary and hadn’t had a particularly good relationship with Mike, partly because of its reluctance to feature laid back recumbent cycles. As the least unacceptable face of the magazine, I was asked to get in touch and see if he’d chat. I was told not to worry if he sent me away with a flea in my ear.
Before becoming the world’s greatest bike designer, Mike’s professional career actually involved making packing machines for banks, but in his spare time he tinkered with different forms of engineering. His cycling hobby was informed by other interests he had or at least had had, such as motor racing, model aeroplanes – the root of his intimate understanding and knowledge of aerodynamics – and sailing. That last pastime eventually led him to make the inline barrel adjuster.
That brings me to my favourite story about Mike, which he told me himself and involved a test ride on the newest version of his Ratracer recumbent race bike. At one point on his route, Mike drew up alongside a couple of road-bike-riding MAMIL types who had stopped at the kerbside. They marvelled at Mike’s low-slung speed machine and couldn’t believe it when he said he had designed it himself.
I first met him in person at Bikefix in London for the launch of the republished version of his autobiographical book, ‘From Bicycle to Superbike’. I’d only ever seen photos of Mike, and the one that stuck in my head showed him standing on a London street, outside Bikefix as it happened, holding his beautifully simple ‘One Way’ city bike.
However, his death has reminded me of something he said during that first conversation we had about Richard Ballantine: “The thing about Richard is that he was a very nice man. He was just really nice. Nobody is going to say that about me when I die.”
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