Richard Lambert of Windover explains why no-frills steel and powder coating is the best recipe for off-road adventures
Words PADDY MADDISON Photography MIKE MASSARO
Windover is one of our local hills,’ Richard Lambert tells Cyclist during a quick break from mechanical support duties on a group ride in Germany. ‘It’s one of the most prominent points of the South Downs Way. We just love riding it, and it’s where a lot of our testing and development happens. It’s a local landmark.’
Together with friends and business partners Sam Watson and Chris Davis, Lambert creates bikes that are geared towards the trio’s local terrain, making the name an apt one.
‘There are lots of roads that go up onto the Downs but they just stop at the top and become dirt tracks. Our bikes are perfect for that because you don’t have to stop and turn back. You can just hop onto the bridleway and keep going.’
Lambert’s love for getting off the beaten track goes back to childhood when he first discovered mountain biking. He recalls lusting after the latest tech and suspension systems that were coming out at the time. And while he has dabbled in smooth surfaces, mixing with traffic on the road has never really agreed with him. So, when the gravel boom first hit, it was a pivotal moment.
‘I had a cyclocross bike that I basically rode gravel on before that’s what people called it. It really suited the sort of riding I like to do. I might start on the road but then see a path and think, “Oh, I wonder what’s down there.” When gravel bikes became a thing I really jumped on that. I just want to be able to explore without being limited, so for a good ten years I’ve been doing that sort of riding.’
When he’s not riding bikes, Lambert is working with them. He manages a local bike shop alongside his work at Windover – a balancing act that he admits is getting trickier as the brand expands – and he’s a qualified bike-fitter, with experience working in custom frame design at Enigma. That’s where he met Watson and Davis.
‘We would be experimenting with stuff and building our own frames – stuff that Enigma wasn’t doing. Enigma wasn’t really bothered about building off-road bikes. It was much more road-focussed. Eventually we all left, and we launched Windover properly last July.
‘I probably did somewhere close to 1,000 bike-fits at Enigma, including hundreds of custom frames. I’ve got
