Cyclopedia (8 page)

BURROWS, Mike
(b. England, 1943)

Groundbreaking English bike designer who produced two definitive designs: the carbon-fiber monocoque engineered by the Lotus car company on which CHRIS BOARDMAN rode to an Olympic gold medal in 1992, and the early TCR compact bike for GIANT, with a sloping top tube, which set the tone for most top-end road bikes in the early 21st century. Burrows is also a stalwart of the RECUMBENT bike movement, producing one of the most popular designs, the Windcheetah (see END TO END for one of the most surprisingfeats achieved on the machine).

Burrows began experimenting with smoothed out steel and carbon-fiber frames for TIME TRIALLING in the 1980s but the Lotus was the definitive design: a cross-shaped frame based on a single colossal smoothed-out strut running from the head tube to the rear hub, with extensions for the bottom bracket and
saddle, and monoblade forks at front and rear. When Boardman won the gold medal, the bike received more attention than he did; it was estimated that Lotus gained about £100 million worth of free advertising. A road version was produced in 1994, and Boardman used it to win the prologue time trial of the TOUR DE FRANCE at record speed. On the downside, he went through a dozen of the frames; they were, he said, “neither robust nor reliable.” In 1993, Burrows also produced a bike for Boardman's big rival GRAEME OBREE, but the Scot preferred to stick to his own machine.

Burrows has also produced a folding bike, the Giant Halfway, which uses his trademark one-piece forks to make the bike flatter when it is folded, and a super-thin bike, the 2D, that is intended to be stored in a narrow hallway. He stopped working for Giant in 2001.

Burrows now builds his own recumbent bikes such as the Ratracer, and also makes a freight bike for courier companies: the 8Freight has an eight-foot wheelbase and thin profile so that it can be ridden down bike lanes. He has raced successfully on the Windcheetah, twice winning the European Human Powered Vehicle championships.

 

(TO READ ABOUT ANOTHER BIKE DESIGNER WHO BROKE THE MOLD, SEE
SIR ALEX MOULTON
; TO READ ABOUT ANOTHER RECUMBENT FAN, SEE
RICHARD BALLANTINE
)

Born:
Halton, England, May 12, 1937

 

Died:
Yorkshire, England, May 8, 1996

 

Major wins:
World road race champion 1960, 1967; world pursuit champion 1959–60, 1962–63, 1966; 72 British time trial titles; 25 British Best All-Rounder titles; 26 national pursuit and road titles; national record (men and women) 12 hours 1967, MBE 1964, OBE 1968

 

Further reading:
Personal Best
, autobiography reissued by Mercian Manuals 2009

 

A fixture in women's racing for 30 years and a multiple world champion, the West Yorkshire racer was one of many cyclists done a disservice by the exclusion of
women from the OLYMPIC GAMES until 1984. Born Beryl Charnock and introduced to cycling by her husband Charlie in 1955, Burton was a fearsome presence on the international stage, taking two world titles in the road race (1960, 1967) and 10 medals in the individual pursuit, including five golds. Her feats were recognized in France at least, where she was invited to ride the Grand Prix des Nations—a Classic normally limited to the best male professionals—in 1968. Riding before the professional field, Burton was some 11 minutes 30 seconds slower than the great Italian Felice Gimondi over the 45-mile course.

She combined her racing with various jobs including laboring on a fruit farm run by her Morley CC clubmate Nim Carline. No cosseted professional, when taking her first world title in Liege in 1959 she contributed expenses from her own pocket, and on returning home to Yorkshire she had to hitch a lift to her house from Leeds station. She dominated women's racing in Britain for 30 years, but her finest exploit came in 1967 when she broke the British record for 12 hours, beating the men's distance with 277.25 miles and overtaking the men's champion Mike McNamara along the way.

“Mac” had started two minutes ahead of Burton; she overhauled him in the final hour, and she later recalled the moment in her autobiography
Personal Best
: “‘I'll have to pass him,' I thought. ‘Poor Mac, it doesn't seem fair.'... ‘Mac raised his head slightly and looked at me. Goodness knows what was going on in his mind but I thought some gesture was required on my part. I was carrying a bag of liquorice allsorts in the pocket of my jersey and on impulse I groped into the bag and pulled one out. It was one of those swiss-roll shaped ones, white with a coating of black liquorice. ‘Liquorice allsort, Mac?' I shouted and held it towards him. He gave a wan smile. I put my head down and drew away.”

That year, she was awarded an OBE and was elected British Sportswoman of the year. Burton's daughter Denise also competed, and mother and daughter both rode the world road race championships in Gap in 1972.

CAMPAGNOLO
, Tullio (b. Italy, 1901, d. 1983)

Founder of cycling's most celebrated component makers and the man behind a host of innovations that are now universal in cycling, most notably the quick-release hub and a parallelogram rear derailleur that was not the first but was copied worldwide. During Campagnolo's 50-year manufacturing career he patented 135 inventions and bikes were transformed: from lumpen machines that had barely moved on since the invention of the safety bike, they became jewel-like, finely crafted pieces of lightweight engineering. The company remains highly secretive: for example, no one outside its factory knows what goes into its legendary off-white grease.

“When we saw a good-looking girl at the roadside, we'd say she was Campag,” recalled the 1950s champion Raphael Geminiani. “Why is the name the most mythical in cycling? It's simple: Tullio changed the lives of cycling greats by producing cutting-edge components, and ordinary cyclists want to be like the greats.”

All this dates back to one day, and one snow-hit race. Campagnolo was an amateur racing cyclist who was riding the Gran Premio della Vittoria over the Croce d'Aune pass in the Dolomites on November 4, 1924, when he had to change gears. This involved undoing the wingnuts on his back wheel and moving the chain to a different sprocket. The wingnuts had frozen up and his hands were too cold to turn them; he was unable to change gear and was deprived of the win.

Tullio's father owned an ironmonger's in Vicenza, northern Italy, where Campagnolo began experimenting. Over the next six years, he came up with the quick release mechanism, in which a hinged lever is turned inward against the wheel drop-out to hold the wheel spindle. The spindle is hollow, and when the lever is undone, springs on either side push the holding mechanism outward so the spindle remains centerd.

Next Tullio came up with various DERAILLEUR mechanisms, culminating in the radical Gran Sport (see time line on page 60). After the Second World War Campagnolo was carried along by the massive industrial growth that transformed Italy from a nation devastated by war to a dynamic modern society based on specialist manufacturing. The company worked with sports car makers Alfa, Ferrari, and Maserati at various times; the company's rapid expansion—from 1 employee in 1940 to 123 by 1950—and constant innovation was a key element in Italian cycling's golden years, when the rivalry between FAUSTO COPPI and GINO BARTALI was at its height. Both men raced on Campagnolo products, and Tullio was in constant contact with them and their mechanics to use their experience in the field to drive the manufacturing process forward. “The key one was the saddle fixing,” said Geminiani. “Tullio brought in a two-pin cradle which meant everything, how far back the saddle was, how it sloped, could be adjusted to the millimeter.” The Gran Sport derailleur, and the 1956 racing pedal and seatpost, all became classic designs copied by many other manufacturers.

By the start of the 1970s, Campagnolo had diversified into motor parts, mainly wheels and brakes. In cycling, thanks to the constant consultation with the best racers and their mechanics—whose comments were recorded in Tullio's notebook—Campagnolo had become preeminent, constantly pushing forward with greats such as EDDY MERCKX using the components. “When I raced, 15 was the smallest sprocket,” recalled Geminiani. “Tullio brought out the 13 for Anquetil, and the 12 for Merckx.” In a similar vein, in 1996 Tullio's son Valentino traveled to the TOUR DE FRANCE with the first nine-speed gear for eventual winner Bjarne Riis.

In the 1970s, however, serious competition emerged in the form of Japanese companies SunTour and SHIMANO, leading to battles on the road between Merckx and Shimano-sponsored rivals. Tullio Campagnolo died in 1983 just as his company was celebrating its 50th anniversary; a groupset specially produced for the occasion was presented to the pope. By then, the company's range was becoming unwieldy, and the advent of MOUNTAIN-BIKING in the US meant that road racing was no longer the cutting edge of componentry: progress was now driven by mountain-bike makers, and production of all but high-end equipment was moving to the Far East.

By the 1980s the most radical road developments no longer came from Campagnolo. Shimano raced ahead, first with indexed shifting, in which the derailleur clicked into predetermined positions so that shifting was no long a matter of guesswork; that in turn led to gear changers that were integrated into brake levers, the Shimano STI. Clipless pedals were produced by the French companies Look and Time, while Shimano and SunTour dominated the mountain-bike
market. It took several years for the Italian company to catch up, and in the meantime it brought out abortive products such as various unwieldy mountain-bike groupsets, the bizarre Delta parallelogram brakes, and heavy clipless pedals.

Campagnolo was revitalized in the early 1990s by the invention of the Ergopower handlebar/ brake lever gear changers that took Shimano head-on. The rise of CYCLOSPORTIVE events in that decade also put the focus back on the road; in 1994 Campagnolo abandoned mountain-biking. Since then it has not attempted to take on Shimano in a straight fight, but has carved out its own niche, pushing road racing technology forward with the extensive use of carbon fiber, a move to 11-speed gearing, and compact gearing, which enables very low gears to be used in sportive events.

Campagnolo initiated the move to factory-built wheels with its groundbreaking Shamal although it appears to have fallen behind Shimano on electric gear-shifting. Its core value, however, remains its relationship with professional cyclists; one company insider estimated that 50 had been consulted before new 11-speed Ergopower changers were produced in 2008.

CAMPIONISSIMO
Italian term meaning champion of champions, coined in 1919 when Costante Girardengo won the GIRO D'ITALIA, taking 7 stages out of 10. The runner-up commented, “I'll never be a
campionissimo
but the names of a few pretty girls are etched on my heart.” The second
campionissimo
was ALFREDO BINDA—five times a Giro winner, with a record 12 stages in 1927—but most often the term is used to refer to FAUSTO COPPI, although Italians would also use it when talking about EDDY MERCKX.

 

CANADA
While all of Canada is not wilderness perpetually blanketed under ice and snow, there are good reasons why ice hockey is the country's dominant sport. Nevertheless, for much of cycling's history, it was arguably more robust in many parts of Canada, particularly Quebec, than it was in the United States.

TRACK in particular dominated cycling's early history in Canada. The biggest draw at SIX-DAY races was William Peden. Known as Torchy for his red hair, Peden won 38 six-days between 1929 and 1948, including 10 in 1932 alone.

Like many leading Canadian riders, Peden's bikes came from the Canadian Cycle and Motor Co., or CCM as it was better known. Canada's five largest bicycle makers merged operations to form CCM in 1899 when the initial bicycle boom waned. Although the company struggled initially, high import tariffs eventually enabled it to dominate the Canadian market. In 1950, for example, 130,413 bicycles were made in Canada, mostly by CCM, while just 29,354 bicycles were imported.

After World War II, time trialling and road racing developed in many parts of Canada largely thanks to a wave of immigrants from Britain and Italy. But cycling never regained the mass popularity it enjoyed during the height of the six-day era.

As is often the case with Canadian matters, the predominately French-speaking province of Quebec remained an exception. Racing there experienced much less of a decline between the end of the war and the second great bicycle boom of the 1970s. From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, Yvon Guillou organized the Tour du Saint Laurent, a stage race that attracted a variety of European amateur teams. It was briefly succeeded by a pro stage race, the Tour de la Nouvelle France, in the 1970s, which again featured European teams and prominent riders.

Since the 1980s, Serge Arsenault has continued to bring
pro racing to Quebec primarily with one-day races on a taxing circuit in downtown Montreal, a city that hosted the world championships in 1899 and 1974.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, the best known Canadian cyclists have not been from Quebec. Both STEVE BAUER, Canada's most successful road rider, and Gord Singleton, the first Canadian world champion (KEIRIN, 1982), come from near Niagara Falls. Bauer was initially coached by Colin Hearth, who also guided Singleton on the track.

Jocelyn Lovell was as irascible as he was successful, winning four gold medals in track events at the COMMONWEALTH GAMES in the 1970s. During a training ride in 1983, however, he was hit by a truck; the accident left him a quadriplegic.

Canadians have also been prominent in MOUNTAIN BIKING, most notably British Columbia's Alison Sydor, a three-time world champion in cross country and the winner of 17 World Cup races.

Clara Hughes found cycling fame in an unusual, and very Canadian, way. After winning, among many other titles, bronze medals in the road race and time trial at the 1996 Olympics, she switched back to speed skating, her first sport. She subsequently won gold, silver, and bronze Olympic medals on ice, making her the first Canadian to win medals at both the summer and winter games.