Watch Fillipo Ganna Set the New Hour Record
Today, the hour record was shattered by INEOS Grenadiers racer Filippo Ganna, who achieved a new record of 56.792 kilometers at the Tissot Velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland. The 26-year-old Italian is two-time World Champion in the time trial, and he showed that his ability to ride at a remarkably steady state for 60 minutes is seemingly unmatchable.
“This amazing goal is fantastic for me,” he said after. “It took a long time to arrive at this.”
From start to finish, the hour record attempt was perfectly executed on Ganna’s part. While it was clear that the effort was excruciating, he maintained a smooth pedal stroke and relatively smooth line. At just around 58:30, Ganna overtook the standing record. By 60 minutes, he had smashed it handily, riding 1.244 kilometers more than the 55.548 kilometer record set by Brigham, and 1.703 further than Victor Campenaerts’ 2019 record of 55.089 kilometers.
But this record is also important because it’s the first time that the Unified Record within the UCI’s specific bike and position protocols has broken Chris Boardman’s hour record of 56.375 kilometers, set in 1997 before the bike and position protocols were in place. The Unified Record began in 2014, after the UCI re-combined the UCI Hour Record and Best Human Effort Record. It was first broken by Jens Voigt in 2014.
The INEOS Grenadiers team livestreamed the challenge, with over 34,000 viewers tuning in. If you missed it, you can still watch the feed via YouTube above. It’s worth watching the final laps, and the cooldown—in fact, the cooldown as he slows his bike down is the first moment we see him looking pained. But once he was off the bike, he was all smiles, doing a little (awkward) victory dance to the cheers from the crowd. (The tossing him around that came from his teammates was also pretty adorable, though they’re probably quite lucky it didn’t make him sick after that effort.)
The record was set at 55.548 kilometers, or 34.515 miles, back in August by Ganna’s teammate and INEOS Grenadiers performance engineer Dan Brigham. Brigham then consulted with Ganna and the team to optimize Ganna’s attempt. The team used every marginal gain possible to make the day perfect, including setting the temperature in the velodrome precisely, specific cooling technologies for Ganna pre-ride, a new 3D print bike from Pinarello, a MucOff chain that took over 25 hours to perfect, a new helmet from Kask and Bioracer’s most aerodynamic skinsuit ever made—and a play on the Top Gun logo, to add a bit of fun to the proceedings. Even the crowd was specifically selected to provide a certain level of noise—and motivation—as the record attempt went on.
“We want to create a blueprint for future UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot attempts but it’s not just limited to track—every single week the team are competing in time trials on the road and there’s a huge amount of detail that we’ve gone into that will help improve our time trialling in many different respects,” Brigham had said before his attempt. “Whether that’s pacing strategies, thermal management or equipment development, it all ties in. There’s so much that we can bring forward to keep the team ahead on the road.”
Ganna’s record marks the third time the hour record has been broken this year: In May, the new women’s record was set by Ellen Van Dijk, and of course, his teammate took the record originally back in August.
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