Ahead of his World Hour Record attempt on Saturday evening, Filippo Ganna has said that his "numbers are good" but that he'll have to do "the biggest effort of my life" to push past the 55.548km that Dan Bigham recorded in August.
The Italian was speaking ahead of his attempt at the Grenchen velodrome in Switzerland, the same arena that saw the Briton, a performance engineer at Ineos Grenadiers, take the record.
Ganna's attempt has been long anticipated, with most pundits predicting that the time trial and track specialist would put the record out of reach for some time.
"The numbers are good in the power metre. I hope to be well, but tomorrow we'll see," Ganna said. "For sure, tomorrow I'll need to do the biggest effort of my life.
"For the last 30 minutes I don't know what to think. Maybe I'll just try to breathe normally and try not to feel the pain in my legs and my ass because it's a hard position [to hold]."
The 26-year-old has reportedly completed a 35-minute trial run at an average of over 56kph, though the difference between that and a full hour is substantial.
He said that he had tried a full hour's effort before the recent Road World Championships but noted that the real pacing would be decided as he goes.
"Tomorrow is 60 minutes so it changes a bit. Maybe if it was 35 minutes I could say that it was really east and then at 36 I'd want to die," he said.
"We tried before the Worlds with a more conservative pace. We saw that I can do it a bit harder and stronger than they think. I'll decide on the real pacing during the race."
Ganna noted that he's been doing laps of between 15.8 and 16 seconds during his training for the attempt, which, when extrapolated out over an hour, would equal a distance of 26.250 to 56.962km, a huge advance on Bigham's record.
Bigham, who himself put 459 metres into Victor Campenaerts' record, has been helping Ganna during the run-up to his attempt, helping design the bike, assisting with training, and also breaking the record himself as part of the prep, he told Cyclingnews.
Speaking about the bike he'll use – a €75,000 3D-printed Pinarello Bolide F HR 3D – with a 64-tooth chainring, Ganna said that it "flies on the track" after a handful of laps, despite the high weight.
"It's heavier than normal but it's faster," he said. "9kg is a lot but it's OK. After the first three or four laps maybe you don't feel super fast, but after five minutes she flies on the track. We hope we can fly for one hour.
"For the gears, I've tried with the 65 and I had an idea to use the 66 but I prefer to stay with a bit of a higher cadence just in case.
"On the track I'll normally stay around 170 or 120rpm but tomorrow it's closer to a road race at about 96rpm."
Ganna's dazzling palmarès already includes six Giro d'Italia stages, two world time trial titles, multiple team and individual pursuit gold medals at world and European level, plus team pursuit gold at the Tokyo Olympics.
The Hour Record would be another big achievement to add to the lengthy list, should he achieve it, but Ganna said it wouldn't quite be at top spot among his career achievements.
"Tomorrow, if I do one of the best performances ever then for sure it will be second place behind the Olympics," he said, noting that merely a "good" performance would rank lower for him.
"That win is the top level. That's the most important event I've done, and I think it's personal when it's a team effort with the guys – winning together is more important than winning alone. That win is the top level."
