James Brown is a keen athlete and cyclist, winning the Bronze medal at the 2012 Paralympics for the tandem road time trial.
Partially sighted, he has also completed in many world championships in a variety of sports from track events to cross-country skiing.
In May 2014 however, James was airlifted to hospital following a bad crash while training on a tandem – a setback that temporarily reined in his sporting lifestyle, until he purchased his first electric bike, a Pedego City Commuter.
“The Pedego allows me to do things I could never do before and the world has opened up. I can’t use a car but now I can jump on the bike and I’ve got a great little trailer for it. On a conventional bike you are quite limited as to what you can carry, but the Pedego is robust enough for towing,” James explained.
Although James purchased his electric bike for recuperation purposes, he now uses it every day. Keen to support local businesses, he uses his bike for shopping in his local area as well as trips to the gym. Longer journeys sees him visiting his girlfriend in Wiltshire, 47 miles away, “with battery life left in my bike after each trip”, says James.
Being a strong advocate of pedal power, James is keen to point out that being a professional cyclist doesn’t exclude you from also using an electric bike. “I’m very keen to see more bikes on the road. A bike revolution is happening in the UK and I think that electric bikes will offer a significant contribution to an explosion of bike use, for all sorts of reasons.”
Despite his accident, James was able to compete in tandem track cycling, for Northern Ireland, in the 2014 Commonwealth games. “It was the first event of this kind to allow para-athletes and mainstream athletes to be together in the same games. It gave great exposure to tandem events on the track and it was a great feeling to take part in such an historic event,” he said.
