Fabian Cancellara fixes himself a coffee before the ride (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Fabian Cancellara takes a push on the Koppenberg (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
The Palma Arena in Mallorca is one of the tracks being considered by Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) for his possible bid on the world hour record, according to a report in the Diario de Mallorca on Friday.
Cancellara visited the track to test material earlier this week during his Trek Factory Racing team’s training camp on the Balearic Island, just as he had done on the cement track of the Luis Puig velodrome in Valencia in December.
While Cancellara went there primarily to fine-tune his position on the track, he is reported to have added Palma to a possible list of hour record sites that already includes Aguascalientes in Mexico and Moscow, where current record holder Ondrej Sosenka set the current record of 49.7 kilometres in 2005.
The indoor Palma Arena was inaugurated in time for the 2007 world track championships, where local rider Juan Llaneras claimed the final rainbow jersey of his career in the points race. Llaneras was on hand to watch Cancellara’s test earlier this week and said that the Swiss rider was impressed by the velodrome.
“Cancellara really liked the Palma Arena. He considers it to be a velodrome where you can ride very fast, and he even told me that he wouldn’t rule out attempting the hour record in Mallorca,” Llaneras told the Diario de Mallorca.
“After the good feelings he had during the test, Cancellara has included the Palma Arena among the possible venues for his attempt, along with the velodromes in Aguascalientes and Moscow.”
Speaking to Cyclingnews in December, Trek Factory Racing manager Luca Guercilena confirmed that Cancellara plans to tackle the hour record at some point in 2014, but highlighted the difficulty of finding an appropriate opportunity to do so during the road season. One such window could come in the weeks after Paris-Roubaix.
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“The hope is to find a period of form during the year where Fabian is at 100%, translate the work he has done on the road onto the track, and then make an attempt on the record straight afterwards,” said Guercilena, who estimated that Cancellara would need at least two weeks to make the transition from road to track.
