Icons of cycling: The Flying Gate

We hail a British design classic that is still going strong

Photo: Graham Watson

British innovation in cycling didn’t start with Lotus and Chris Boardman. The legendary Flying Gate, which is still being produced 82 years after the first one was brazed, proves that British engineers were already rethinking the conventional diamond frame as long ago as 1934.

‘Flying Gate’ is a nickname that stuck. Its creators, W & R Baines of Bradford, gave their unique frame much more impressive-sounding names such as ‘International TT’ and ‘Whirlwind’. But their straight-talking Yorkshire customers said what they saw.

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