56.375 km: Chris Boardman smashes Rominger's record


He started with an average speed of about 56.5 km/h, 1km/h faster than Tony Rominger. At 30 km his lead was 34 seconds. Two times (around 38 km and 46 km) he had to "relax" a little bit and rode a lap on the drop bar to release the pain caused by the stretched out superman position. After that second "break" he increased his speed more and more, riding the last laps with an incredible average speed of almost 59 km/h, pushing him finally to 56.375 km at the end of the hour!

DIST Rominger 05.11.94 Boardman 06.09.96
1 km 01'10.6''01'10.8''
5 km 05'30.3" 05'27.0"
10 km 10'53.5" 10'47.1''
15 km 16'17.2" 16'05.5''
20 km 21'42.9" 21'23.9"
25 km 27'08.7" 26'42.5''
30 km 32'25.0" 32'00.5"
35 km 38'00.5" 37'20.7''
40 km 43'26.9" 42'41.3"
45 km 48'53.6" 48'01.1''
50 km 54'18.7" 53'21.7"
55 km 59'41.7" 58'35.5''
1 hour 55.291 km56.375 km
 

Since 2014 there is a video on youtube showing the full attempt (the first 10 km are missing, also the clock is not shown continously and the commentator is fighting transmission problems most of the time).

I used the laptimes from the video (plus information from a graphic from Xavier Disley) to create a similar graphic to that above:

One can nicely see those two periods when he was riding on the drop bars, also his incredible finish. You can find the file with the laptimes here.



Back to hour record page