The Windcheetah tricycle was designed by the legendary Mike Burrows, a man widely acknowledged to be the most creative bike designer of modern times. Mike’s most famous creation to date is the all carbon pursuit bike he designed for British rider Chris Boardman, sponsored by Lotus. This machine was the first carbon monocoque cycle, and was the inspiration for many imitators in the next few years. Boardman took this revolutionary bike to the Barcelona Olympics in `94 securing Britain’s first cycling gold medal for over 30 years. Shortly after that Mike’s services were secured by Giant Cycles, Taiwan’s largest cycle manufacturer. Mike was given a brief to lift Giant’s image and create some world-class bikes. Mike’s first major design for his new employer was the Giant MCR, at the time the worlds most advanced road bike. Giant provided Windcheetah rider Andy Wilkinson [see our special feature on Andy elsewhere on the website] with one of the new bikes and he promptly set world time trial records for 12 hours, 24 hours, 50 mile and 100-mile distances. The next creation for Giant was the TCR, with its trademark sloping top tube. This was a landmark design for a Taiwanese company who received the ultimate form of flattery when all the major Italian factories copied the classic Burrow’s design, possibly the first time the major European factories copied a Taiwanese design as opposed to vice versa!

Mikes design skills are not restricted to high performance bikes and he has created a number of exciting workbike and folding bike designs in recent years. He also continues to build his Ratcatcher and Ratracer recumbent bicycle range, albeit in limited numbers. This year we managed to prise him away from his various projects in order to do a design overhaul on the Windcheetah. The result is the new HyperSport. We are pleased to say that AVD enjoys a close relationship with Mike and we are in contact on a daily basis regarding the Windcheetah and its future developments. Mike remains a committed cyclist and recently celebrated his 60th birthday by cycling to London and back in a day, a distance of 240 miles!