Not that long ago, Jens Voigt crushed the hour record that had stood for 9 years, only to be immediately beat by Matthias Brandle. The hour record is one of the longest-standing cycling competitions, with the first running (and record) set in 1893.
BMC is sponsoring an attempt at breaking the hour record by Australian pro Rohan Dennis. Dennis is an Olympic silver medalist on the track. A member of BMC Racing Team’s World Championship winning time-trial team in 2014, and fresh off a 2nd place at the Australian National individual time-trial championships.
Hosting the attempt at the Velodrome Suisse in Grenchen, Switzerland, BMC will open the doors at 12:00pm, and start the event at 2:00pm. If you are lucky enough to be local, you can get tickets to attend, but for the rest of us, BMC will live stream the event at www.bmc-switzerland.com/HourRecord. It is a live stream, so that is 8:00am on the east coast of the United States, and 5:00am out on the west coast, on February 8th.
It seems that the hour record has come back as a way for pros to keep a little one-upsmanship going in the off season. If Dennis can pull off another re-setting of the bar, it should be pretty exciting to see which pro responds next.
