photo credit @ Team Wiggins
With his Hour Record Challenge fast approaching, Bradley Wiggins isn’t underestimating the feat necessary to dethrone Alex Dowsett of his current title.
“If the conditions are right on the day. They would have to be really right. A lot of the hour record is dictated by temperature and air pressure. Air pressure is everything,” Wiggins told Britain’s Sky Sports.
“The weather forecast for the first week in June is abnormally low pressure for London for that time of year, which is fantastic. That has dictated everything. You could go a kilometer either way depending on air pressure.
“If the conditions are right, it’s possible. The goal is to break the record first and foremost. I wouldn’t underestimate the record that Alex has done.”
Wiggins feels his experience as an accomplished track rider is perhaps how most vital asset, as proper pacing iwill prove to be crucial in his bid for the Hour Record this weekend.
“Pace judgement is everything in the hour record,” he told them. “If you can ride 16.1 or 16.2-second laps constantly for 221 laps, and not go 15.9s or 16.4s, it’s keeping it on the line every lap, lap after lap.
“The most efficient way is to keep the power [constant], and that in itself is a skill. If you look at Alex Dowsett’s [graph], he went like that [upward line] because he went faster, but people like Thomas Dekker [who failed in an attempt in February 2015] were all over the shop.
“It’s like sitting on the motorway in the fast lane revving it in third gear, braking really hard, revving it. It’s just a case of putting it in cruise control at 70mph and sitting. It’s the most efficient way for a record like this.”
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