The development of the men's and women's record over the years. I show the three different categories "UCI", "Best Performace", and "2014"
plus a different colour for low and high altitude records.
Then came the "UCI Hour Record", with only two succesful attempts from Chris Boardman and Ondrej Sosenka for the men (and quite a few failed attempts!). The women improved the old record from 1978 four times, getting closer and closer to the men's record. Finally the difference between men and women was just about 3.6 km! The last women's attempts were made at high altitude at Mexico City, which should give roughly an advantage of 1-2 km/h, but still the small difference is impressive... With the new rule change in 2014 and aerodynamic improvements in the past years one would expect that both men and women should be capable of beating the records from the nineties. However, the men's first attempts were only as fast as the eighties records (were bullhorn handlebars were used...). The men improved in the following years, however in 2021 the record of Victor Campenaerts (55.089 km at altitude) was still well below Chris Boardman's mark (and also below Toni Rominger's mark), both at sea level. In 2022 finally Dan Bigham beat Toni Rominger's mark and in october Filippo Ganna unified all men's records with a mark of 56.792 km. The women did better and showed a huge improvement, Joscelin Lowden beating Jeannie Longo's record from 1996 in september 2021, and in may 2022 Ellen van Dijk with 49.254 km. Finally Vittoria Bussi crashed the 50 km mark reaching 50.267 km at altitude in october 2023. So now the women are about 6.5 km/h slower than the men, a little bit less than the difference in the nineties... Back to the hour record page |
