British cyclist Charlie Tanfield fell three kilometres short of breaking Filippo Ganna’s UCI Hour Record on Thursday.
The 28-year-old rode a distance of 53.967km during his attempt inside the velodrome in Konya, Turkey. Ganna’s benchmark, which has stood since October 2022, remains at 56.792km.
Tanfield’s distance makes his effort the seventh furthest Hour Record of all time. He is also the fourth fastest Brit, behind Bradley Wiggins, Alex Dowsett, and the national record holder, Dan Bigham (55.548km).
Speaking before his attempt, Tanfield explained that he planned to use a ‘negative split’ strategy, meaning he would start below record pace, before then trying to speed up in the second half of his effort.
A former track world champion, Tanfield began preparing for the Hour Record shortly after last summer’s Paris Olympics, where he won a silver medal as part of Great Britain’s team pursuit squad.
During his training, he spent time at altitude in Andorra, and carried out turbo trainer sessions in a tent in his garden, riding at a temperature of 45°C.
“It’s a beast,” he said of the challenge. “It’s such a hard event that unless you are passionate about it, I really don’t think you would be willing to put yourself through the suffering and the preparation you have to do to actually get to the start line.”
Asked if he had a target distance in mind, Tanfield said it was “quite up in the air”.
“I’ve done a lot of training on slower kit, so it’s quite hard in your head [to know] what’s going to be race pace, the conditions in Konya – the air density is so much lower – it’s very hard to map that out.”
The track in Konya is located at 1,200m altitude – 750m higher than the velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland where Ganna set his record.
