Dan Bigham, the current holder of the British Hour Record and Ineos Grenadiers’ performance engineer, will attempt to break the official UCI Hour Record held by Victor Campenaerts next Friday.
The 30-year-old, who balances his own racing with work for the British WorldTour team, will make his attempt in the familiar setting of the Grenchen velodrome in Switzerland.
Bigham set a distance of 54.723 kilometres on the Grenchen track last year, beating Bradley Wiggins' British benchmark set when the former Tour de France champion broke the UCI Hour Record back in 2015.
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Now Bigham will look to break the 55.089km world record set by Campenaerts at altitude in 2019, using the latest developments discovered at Ineos Grenadiers and the form he honed for the recent Commonwealth Games.
"The UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot has been a massive thing in my life for the past few years, since I first attempted one as a student in 2014," Bigham said.
"I’m excited about the prospect of seeing what I can do against the clock again, with the support of the team behind me."
Bigham has enjoyed success in track racing and has caught the eye in elite international time trials, but he is not a full-time professional rider. He has raced part time with Great Britain and British road teams while using his academic background to work as an an aerodynamics consultant for various teams, including Jumbo-Visma, Canyon-SRAM, and Denmark's track cycling team.
After joining Ineos Grenadiers as performance engineer this year, the path to a possible world Hour Record opened up, having previously been blocked off due to his non-professional status.
Given he was not part of the UCI biological passport programme last year, Bigham's hour in Grenchen was not officially ratified by the UCI, and would not have counted for the official Hour Record had he gone further than Campenaerts. He explained that for an individual to sign up to the UCI's testing pool would cost £8,000, with the total cost for a full-scale attempt nearing £25,000.
His association with Ineos Grenadiers has now opened that door, along with allowing him to work alongside the team's sponsors to take on the record with the best possible equipment.
"Physically I’ve moved on since becoming a part of the Ineos Grenadiers. As much as my workload is high, it’s been nice to have everything I do consolidated within one place," Bigham said.
"It means I can be so much more organised in how and when I can train, while having the full support of the team - not just in allowing me to train, but enabling me to train efficiently. It’s been great to bounce ideas off so many fantastic people within the team and I’ve been welcomed with open arms.
"Having access to all of the team’s partners has been massive for me. The amount of support that Pinarello have put into this project by bringing a new, incredibly high-level bike to the table in such a short space of time is pretty astronomical. We’ve done a huge amount of skin suit testing with Bioracer over the past six months too. It’s been really impressive and I feel like I’m in a really good position on that front. Some of the ideas that we’ve implemented across the whole package have been left field but wholly adopted. It’s been such a progressive project to be involved in."
Bigham will make his attempt on August 19 at the Grenchen velodrome, which lies in the middle of the altitude equation that's key to Hour Record attempts.
Sea level velodromes offer more oxygen to power the muscles but the denser air means more drag resistance, whereas high-altitude comes with lower air pressure but less oxygen to consume.
Campenaerts' set the current record at the famous Aguascalientes velodrome in Mexico, up at 1800 metres, whereas Wiggins was closer to sea level in London.
Bigham, meanwhile, will be riding at 450 metres, in the same velodrome he used last year and where his partner Joss Lowden broke the women's UCI Hour Record, which has since been beaten by Ellen van Dijk.
