Time trial experts, Tony Martin and Fabian Cancellara, are both considering taking a stab at the one hour record sometime over the next six months.
“You can’t just say one day, ‘I’m going to do the record.’ You have to plan it for weeks or maybe for months. You have to find the moment in the year. What is the best moment in the year? I don’t know,” said general manager Patrick Lefevere of Martin’s Omega Pharma – Quick Step team.
“If .”
The hour record currently stands at 49.700 kilometers – set by Ondřej Sosenka in 2005 after breaking Chris Boardman’s 49.441km mark set back in 2000. No other professional cyclist since then has attempted to break it.
During the race’s "golden era", such luminaries as Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, and Eddy Merckx all laid claim to the record.
As a result of improvements in equipment and bike technology,cycling’s governing body, the UCI, moved to ban extreme bikes and positions from the record back in 2000. And, in doing so, they rolled by back the mark to Merckx’s 1972 49.431km distance – therefore, nullifying records set by Francesco Moser, Graeme Obree, Miguel Indurain, Tony Rominger. and Boardman during the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, only Boardman and Sosenka have been successful in beating the record.
Luca Guercilena, general manager of Cancellara’s soon to be Trek Factory Racing team in 2014, said last month that Cancellara wants to establish a new record.
“It’s good for cycling to have a big name going for the record,”Guercilena said.
“It’d be good to get stars going for the record again, above all for someone like Cancellara who’s gone well against the clock for the last 10 years. It’s only right to put it on the program.”
Cancellara won the world time trial title four times and the Olympic title in 2008. According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Cancellara will go to the Valencia’s Luis Puig velodrome this Friday for testing.
Guercilena told the media that a decision would be made this month – as to whether Cancellara will attempt the record in 2014.
Three-time defending world time trial champion, Tony Martin, said that talk of attempts by time trial rivals Bradley Wiggins and Cancellara have encouraged him to give it a try. .
Martin told the German press last month, “I also have it in mind,” “Being the fastest man in the world would be a nice title to have.”
On the other hand, Lefevere labelled the hour record as “boring”, and warned it may struggle to re-establish its place in today’s sport.
“Some races that were popular in the 1980s are not popular anymore, like Bordeaux-Paris,” Lefevere added. “The record is not the most exciting thing to watch. It’s boring.”
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