Trek Founder Passes Away at 73 March 14, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Tour De France, Breaking News, Cycling , add a commentThe sport of cycling has lost a true pioneer. Richard Burke, a founder of the Trek Bicycle Corporation, which capitalized on the luster of Lance Armstrong’s victories in the Tour de France to reshape the way top-of-the-line bikes are manufactured, died Monday in Milwaukee at 73.
It was on a $6,500 carbon-fiber Model 5500 bike built by Trek that Mr. Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999, the first of his seven straight Tour titles. With that, Trek became the first American bike company to win the Tour and the first to build a carbon-fiber bike that won the Tour,” John Bradley, a senior editor and the cycling expert at Outside magazine, said Wednesday. “It was a watershed moment.”Racing bikes must be as light and stiff as possible. Before being made of carbon fiber, which has the best stiffness-to-weight ratio, the bikes were made of steel, titanium or aluminum. (more…)
