OKBET CYCLING : Dan Bigham establishes a new UCI Hour Record

On Friday, Dan Bigham surpassed Victor Campenaerts’ old UCI Hour Record by 459 meters as he rode 55.548 kilometers around the velodrome in Grenchen.

Bigham set the British record after riding 54.723 kilometers in Grenchen in October, but he was unable to go for the outright Hour Record at the time because he was not a member of the UCI biological passport testing pool.

The part-time cyclist is now employed as a performance engineer with the WorldTour team Ineos Grenadiers, which gave him the support he needed to attempt the UCI Hour Record.

On Friday, Bigham produced a negative split, despite having passed Campenaerts’ record pace a bit earlier than the latter may have expected. Although unfazed, the 30-year-old cranked up his pace beyond the halfway point, running many laps in under 16 seconds.

Bigham: “I was really a little bit ahead pretty much across the board.” “I had five-minute splits and I knew I had to be a particular amount of time down and then ahead of the record,” Bigham added. “At that point, you begin to calculate what you’ll need to perform in order to set a new record. Gaining a fraction of a second with each lap is reassuring.

Prior to April 2019, Campenaerts held the record with a distance of 55.089 kilometers set at a high altitude in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Alex Dowsett, a countryman of Bigham’s, was the last rider to attempt the Hour Record; his effort in Aguascalientes in November of last year fell short by 500 meters.

Campenaerts predicted Bigham would surpass his time in an interview with Cyclingnews this week, and the Belgian’s prediction came true. After getting out in front of his competition at the Tissot Velodrome on Friday, Bigham never appeared like he was going to let up.

Bigham remarked, “I believe you’ve never had it until you’ve rode the laps, which is sort of scary: you’re on pace but you still have to cross the distance.” About halfway through, I had a mental breakdown, asking myself, “How am I going to ride 16.0-second laps for the next half hour?” That’s ridiculous,’ they’d say, but nothing ever came of it. When I started, I was able to maintain that feeling of control, so I continued.

Bigham surpassed Campenaerts’ record with almost half a minute to spare, and he continued on to extend the UCI Hour Record to 55.548 kilometers. He said, “It was quite satisfying.” “I was shooting for 55.5 kilometers, so adding extra 48 meters makes me very pleased.”

Bigham rode farther than anybody else who had ever attempted the Hour Record before the UCI revised the limits on equipment in 1997. Bigham broke Tony Rominger’s record of 55.291 kilometers set in 1995, while Chris Boardman’s record of 56.375 kilometers set in 1996 while riding in the illegal “Superman” position has not been beaten.

Since the UCI decided to modify the rules regarding equipment once again in 2014, numerous riders have attempted to set new records, including Jens Voigt, Matthias Brändle, Rohan Dennis, Dowsett, Bradley Wiggins, and Thomas Campenaerts (all of whom set new standards before Bigham’s attempt on Friday).

Dan Bigham

Bigham surpassed Wiggins’ British record last year soon after lining up for Great Britain in the World Championships time trial. He took his first, informal go at the Hour while a student at Oxford Brookes University in 2015, covering just short of 47km at Reading’s Palmer Park Stadium.

On Friday, Bigham gave credit to Ineos Grenadiers for their help in the lead-up to this recent effort. Although world time trial champion and Ineos rider Filippo Ganna was expected to make a try at the Hour Record this summer, he has now pushed back his attempt until later this year or maybe next.

Bigham believes that “the step shift” was made possible by the “ungodly level of support” he received from Ineos. I could go on and on about how great the staff and facilities at CDA are, but the truth is that everything from the execution to the physiology to the thermal treatments to the diet – everything – they simply raised it up a notch.

“I couldn’t have asked for better people to rally behind me. Having to come here and perform has simplified things greatly. I haven’t had any issues with my bike, mechanics, timing, broadcast, or anything else this whole week. My evening was stress-free since I didn’t have to worry about making supper or cleaning up afterward. As one would hope for with a squad of this caliber, it has been excellent.

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