If there’s a guaranteed way for bikes to make their way into mainstream media, it’s when a celebrity is involved. And if that celebrity had a bike accident? Bonanza. Therefore, there was a sense of immortality to see this name of Simon Cowell splashed across the internet this week – the music mogul, as you can see, broke his back on an e-bike in the courtyard of his house in Malibu.
… Or the he?
After a flurry of stories sparking conversations about the gruesome details of Cowell’s crash – which was revealed as “breaking his back in a number of places”, which required the insertion of a metal rod into his back, began the contemplated pieces of thinking arise.
Health.com led with the very neutral headline “Simon Cowell broke his back in ‘Several’ places after an E-Bike accident – here are why they are so dangerous”. Not content to gobble up all those anti-bike clicks, USA Today pondered the age-old question “Simon Cowell crash: How safe are e-bikes?”
Famous grubby tabloid The Sun – which you may remember from the classic headline “Harrison Ford reveals his striking bump while riding a bike shorts” – went with “X-Fracture: Simon Cowell Bike Accident”, which is allowed of brilliant. Variety also got rid of the ‘part’ of the ‘e-bike’, claiming that Simon Cowell simply had a ‘bike accident’.
Not an e-bike
But as Forbes Transportation Journalist Carlton Reid’s report has since revealed, Cowell was not on a bike at all, or even an e-bike. “Media reports have wrongly stated that British music mogul Simon Cowell broke his back in the courtyard of his Malibu house, falling from an electric bicycle,” Reid writes. ‘In fact, he rode an electric motorcycle with a top speed of 60 mph [96.5 km/h]. That bike, which makes a real mess out of a pile of mulch, is pictured above, not ridden by Simon Cowell.
The bike that Cowell crashed was a CAB Recon, which has a monstrous 20 kw engine – yes, 20 one thousand watts, as opposed to the standard 250 – and has been described by CAB, among Monster’s swigs without a doubt, as “hands down the most powerful production electric bike on the planet”.
One of these was produced by Susan Boyle. The other hits loose in ground.
It has pedals, but that’s where the equality ends. In the US, it is not classified as an e-bike. In the EU, it would be classified as an electric motor, requiring a license, registration and safety. In Australia, it would be banned from public roads.
In a tweet probably written by the haze of morphine, even Cowell did not refer to it as an e-bike, saying he crashed his new ‘electric trail bike’ as a result of operator error.
What good advice…
If you are buying an electric trail bike, read the manual before riding it for the first time.
I broke a part of my back.
Thank you everyone for your friendly messages.– Simon Cowell (@SimonCowell) August 10, 2020
Good advice indeed.
A CAB spokesman says the “electric trail bike” in question has a range of 193 km (193 km), the power of 27 horses, “can wipe out any jump from right before the jump” – I mean, sure, what then also – and “Wheelie will go up to 72-40 mph (72 km / h)”.
As other media groups report, this may be an indication of how the 60-year-old music mogul found himself in this predicate. “He made a turn in his yard, changed gears, and then the bike went into a wheelie and threw him off his back,” claimed an unnamed Page Six source.
Cowell’s crash as media construction
But while the forensic details of Cowell’s crash are somewhat unimportant in the scheme of things, seen as if the boy’s back was somehow painfully broken, there are interesting lessons to be learned from the media response to the crash.
Instead of pointing out that Cowell might not have jumped a massive wheelie on a motorbike in his courtyard, most news outlets have instead jumped in by highlighting the dangers of e-bikes. Even though he, uh, did not advise anyone in the first place.
CowellGate’s ABC News analysis claims the incident “raises concerns about e-bike safety”. The story contains an image of a Dutch city bike, and adds quotes from a spokeswoman for a bike company that produces cute little folding bikes with small engines that in no way resemble the $ 8,500 monster that got better is from Cowell. The article also notes usefully that “e-bikes have a motor and often have more power than a normal bike”.
The pound of our streets. Screenshot: ABC News.
The UK’s Bicycle Association – a body representing Cowell’s motherland cycling industry – issued a statement following the crash in an attempt to deal with the tabloid pile-on. “The Bicycle Association, on behalf of the UK cycling industry, would like to emphasize that what is commonly referred to as e-bikes for sale in UK retail stores have almost nothing in common in technical or safety terms with the electric motor developed by Simon council was Cowell, ”reads the statement. “There’s a very small risk that every electric bike in the UK will buy an unintentional Wheelie.”
In fact, there is very little risk of elk electric bikes everywhere causing unintentional wheels – unless the buyer is deliberately looking for an expensive, massive overpowering and legal version on the street. But why let that get in the way of a good beat-up?
The result of all this is that Simon Cowell’s whooption on a motor was used as fodder to exist a media construction of The Terrors of Cycling. Here, e-bikes are not referred to as a tube to exercise, but as something to fear, and those people who ride bikes are – even if just unconsciously – a little further marginalized.
Evening bikes make people healthier, and people stay less healthy, which has the potential for far broader health specifications than a reality TV star who has a rough day. But then again, I think this only ever went into One Direction.
Author’s note
On behalf of CyclingTips, I wish Simon Cowell all the best in his recovery. While I do not like any of Cowell’s TV programs and find his public persona completely harmful, I do note that Cowell was tangentially involved in Leona Lewis’ 2007 banger Bleeding Love, which is worth nothing. He apparently also writes a series of books with his six-year-old son, which is an evolution I view with cautious anticipation.
