Simon Cowell Broke His Back, Learned the Difference Between e-Bike and Electric Motorcycle

The accident, as you may have heard, occurred in Cowell’s back yard in Malibu, in August 2020. He’d seen the e-bike at a show in his home country, spoken to the makers and had one unit shipped from London to sunny California. He’d just unboxed it when, without reading the owner’s manual included, he jumped in the saddle and thought he’d take it for a spin around the property.

Not familiar with the controls, he hit torque, and it was enough to send the e-bike into a wheelie which, in turn, threw Cowell off, onto his back. He broke three vertebrae, and required extensive surgery and months of recovery therapy, as reports claimed he might never walk again. Thankfully, he is now back to normal.

Even better, he tells Terri Seymour of ExtraTV. Simon Cowell feels so much better and is in such an improved physical shape that he would even go through that ordeal again if he was presented the chance to go back in time. This, despite the fact that “if it had been another millimeter, then it would have been a different story,” and he’d be paralyzed.

There’s a certain bravado in saying this, which tries to mask a lesson learned the hard way. Cowell is putting on his tough guy act to say, in a very roundabout way, that he’s learned from his mistake and that he’s wiser because of it. That’s perhaps the one good thing to come out of the ordeal, after the fact that he’s still alive to tell the story.

Because Cowell was excessively reckless about the whole thing. The “e-bike” he bought and then tried to use without first familiarizing himself with it is not a “bike,” as in, an “electric bicycle.” It’s an electric moped that is marketed as the most powerful on the market, a trail bike that comes with a 15 kW (20 hp) motor, 60 times more powerful than anything road-legal in Europe. It has pedals alright, but only so that it can be sold as an “e-bike.”

Right after the accident and the extended recovery period, Cowell was still trying to lay the blame at the door of the makers of this trail bike, the Swind EB-01. Though he admitted on social media that he should have read the owner’s manual, he also went on the record saying that e-bikes that were “basically motorcycles with an electric motor” were dangerous, and warning people about them. His example was confirmation of that, he said, detailing how he’d been sent flying through the air, how agonizing the pain was, and how he came thisclose to never walking again.

Whether you know Cowell from his work as a music producer and record label boss, or his always-funny appearances on talent shows both in the UK and the U.S., and regardless of what you think of him, his words do carry weight. They carry even more weight when they’re painting him as the victim, a rider who’d been deceived into buying a powerful e-moto thinking that it was an e-bike, and who was nearly killed because of it.

In reality, Cowell was the victim of his arrogance only. He is a passionate cyclist, with more than 3 years of experience in riding e-bikes of all makes and models, all of which he buys himself. He rides daily and, according to reports, will use his fame to secure meetings with company bosses, just so he can find out more about a model that piques his interest, like he did with the Swind EB-01. He knew exactly what he would get with that bike, but he was too careless or lazy to read the instructions on how to operate it and, sadly, he paid the price.

On the bright side, it does seem like he’s learned his lesson, even though he’s not saying it out loud. These days, he explains, he rides “pedal-assist bikes,” meaning, actual e-bikes. He still enjoys cycling and he does at least 10 miles (16 km) a day, which he calls his “most creative” time of the day. Silver linings and all that.