The founder of Trek Bicycles, Richard “Dick” Burke, died Monday at age 73 from complications after heart surgery. Burke started Trek in 1976 and saw it become one of cycling’s all-time success stories, helped in no small part by Trek being the bike on which Lance Armstrong won seven Tours de France. Trek is North America’s largest bicycle company with sales of $700 million in 75 countries and about 1,600 employees worldwide, including about a thousand at plants in Waterloo and Whitewater, Wisconsin. The current Trek president is Dick Burke’s son John, who said his father’s health had been deteriorating “and over the weekend he said goodbye to close family and friends. It was vintage Big Guy. It’s hard to believe that it is over. He fought the good fight.”