Cycling industry mourns loss of Bernard Rohloff

Bicycle industry legend Bernhard Felix Rohloff has sadly passed away at the age of 73.

Having suffered from Parkinson’s disease, he died peacefully and unexpectedly on Friday 19 May 2023.

This is certainly one of those occasions when terms like iconic and legendary will be used, with Rohloff having a vast impact on the world of cycling.

It is thanks to his ingenuity that gearbox equipped bicycles were also able to establish themselves in the field of sporting use, and have since been portrayed anew, as innovative and stylish products. Synonymous with low maintenance, the Rohloff hub is an industry lynchpin.

Lloyd Townsend, MD of Ison Distribution, Rohloff’s UK Distributor, commented: “I will miss Bernie, he was such a humble and pleasant person. His engineering genius produced the World’s most respected internal gear hub. We are proud to have worked with Bernie for more than two decades and send our sincere condolences to all of the family and great folks at Rohloff who will continue Bernie’s great engineering legacy.”

Bernhard and Barbara Rohloff established Rohloff GmbH in 1986, filing for its initial S-L-T 99 chain patent in the same year. The first S-L-T 99 chains were dispatched to customers two years later and the company started hitting the cycle trade show circuit. After launching the Rohloff Cash8, an adapter that made Campagnolo cassette hubs compatible with Shimano derailleur cassettes, all Campag groupsets were equipped with S-L-T 99 chains and 1990 saw Greg Lemond win the Tour de France using an S-L-T 99 chain.

Over the years, Rohloff expanded its scope, launching the Caliber and chain lube and – in 1996, a decade after the company was founded – the SPEEDHUB 500/14. Another ten years on and the 50,000th SPEEDHUB was shipped, and Bernard Rohloff himself constructed the 100,000th SPEEDHUB live at Eurobike in 2008, just two years later. Plenty more product highlights over the years (including the Rohloff E-15 for eBikes in 2017) followed but the company was forward thinking and innovative beyond product too, quick to establish itself online (in 1996), and opening a B2B online shop for Rohloff dealers in 2009.