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Victor Campenaerts to take on the UCI Hour Record

  • Ron 

The UCI announced that Belgian rider Victor Campenaerts the Lotto Soudal team will attempt to set a new UCI Hour Record timed by TISSOT on April 16th or 17 at the Velodromo Bicentenario in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Campenaerts is aiming to beat the 54.526 kilometres covered by Great Britain’s Bradley Wiggins at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London (UK) on 7 June 2015.

The 27-year-old Flemish rider has established himself as one of the world’s leading specialists in timed events. A bronze medallist in the Men Elite individual time trial – behind Rohan Dennis (AUS) and Tom Dumoulin (NED) – at the 2018 UCI Road World Championships in Innsbruck, Austria, Campenaerts won back-to-back European titles in the event in 2017 and 2018.

Following the 2018 Worlds, the reigning Belgian champion completed an encouraging trial run at the Vélodrome Suisse in Granges and then travelled to Namibia for two months of altitude training. Campenaerts is due to ride at the Tirreno-Adriatico (13-19 March), a UCI WorldTour event comprising a team time trial on the opening day and an individual time trial on the last.  The Lotto Soudal rider will then make the trip to Mexico, three weeks before his record attempt. For this project, his team has partnered with the company Golazo, sports marketing specialists and organiser of hundreds of sporting events in Europe, to take care of the financing and event management of the attempt.

An indoor arena situated 1,800 metres above sea level, the Velodromo Bicentenario has hosted several previous attempts, the most recent of them coming last year, when Martin Toft Madsen (Denmark) and Dion Beukeboom (Netherlands) took on the men’s record and Italy’s Vittoria Bussi set the existing women’s world best of 48.007 km. Aguascalientes also hosted major events on the UCI International Track Cycling Calendar, including several rounds of the UCI Track World Cup and the 2014 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships.

Discussing his attempt, Victor Campenaerts said: “The UCI Hour Record is a unique challenge in cycling and to beat it would be a way for me to write a bit of the sport’s history. I respect Bradley a lot and I do not consider myself as a better athlete than the former Tour de France winner and five-time Olympic champion. However, by making progress and taking into account every possible detail, I hope to have a chance to take over the hour record. Personally, the world hour record, the world time trial title and the Olympic time trial title are the three dreams I want to pursue the coming years, starting with the world hour record.”

UCI President David Lappartient said: “I am delighted to see that the UCI Hour Record timed by TISSOT continues to generate so much enthusiasm among riders, even if Bradley Wiggins raised the bar very high. Victor is a superb specialist who showed what he is capable of by climbing on to the podium at the last UCI Road World Championships. I cannot wait to see how he fares in Mexico in April, knowing the part that altitude can play in outstanding performances.”

The UCI Hour Record timed by TISSOT has attracted fresh interest among riders since the regulations were updated in 2014 to permit the use of the latest pursuit bikes. Since then a total of ten men and six women have attempted to make history in the fabled event.
Below is a list of previous UCI Hour Record attempts (new records in bold):

Men
22.08.2018: Dion Beukeboom (NED), Velodromo Bicentenario, Aguascalientes (MEX), 52.757 km
26.07.2018: Martin Toft Madsen (DEN), Velodromo Bicentenario, Aguascalientes (MEX), 53.630 km
07.06.2015: Bradley Wiggins (GBR), Lee Valley VeloPark, London (GBR), 54.526 km (current record)
02.05.2015: Alex Dowsett (GBR), National Cycling Centre, Manchester (GBR), 52.937 km
14.03.2015: Gustav Larsson (SWE), National Cycling Centre, Manchester (GBR), 50.016 km
25.02.2015: Thomas Dekker (NED), Velodromo Bicentenario, Aguascalientes (MEX), 52.221 km
08.02.2015: Rohan Dennis (AUS), Vélodrome Suisse, Granges (SUI), 52.491 km
31.01.2015: Jack Bobridge (AUS), Darebin International Sports Centre, Melbourne (AUS), 51.300 km
30.10.2014: Matthias Brändle (AUT), UCI World Cycling Centre, Aigle (SUI), 51,852 km
18.09.2014: Jens Voigt (GER), Vélodrome Suisse, Granges (SUI), 51.110 km

Women
14.09.2018: Vittoria Bussi (ITA), Velodromo Bicentenario, Aguascalientes (MEX), 48.007 km (current record)
06.10.2017: Vittoria Bussi (ITA), Velodromo Bicentenario, Aguascalientes (MEX), 47.576 km
27.02.2016: Evelyn Stevens (USA), Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center Velodrome (USA), 47.980 km
22.01.2016: Bridie O’Donnell (AUS), Adelaide’s Super-Drome (AUS), 46.882 km
12.09.2015: Molly Shaffer Van Houweling (USA), Velodromo Bicentenario, Aguascalientes (MEX), 46.273 km
28.02.2015: Sarah Storey (GBR), Lee Valley VeloPark, London (GBR), 45.502 km

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