Sir Bradley Wiggins book extract: I may attempt the hour record again
Last Updated: 11/12/15 9:25am
Sir Bradley Wiggins' new book, My Hour, was released on Thursday.
It is a personal, behind-the-scenes account of his attempt to break the iconic UCI Hour Record in London in June.
In this last of three extracts being published by Sky Sports, Wiggins discusses attacking the record again...
[Eddy] Merckx's Hour was the definitive record. He's the benchmark. I've spoken about going for the record again and I'm toying with going for his distance in an Athlete's Hour of my own.
I'm planning on doing some tests with similar kit - a hairnet crash-hat and so on - to see what the numbers are. I might be way off his pace. I might not be able to hold his position and be as aerodynamic, but then Merckx wasn't aero in the slightest.
You watch him riding it and he's all over the place. You compare him with Chris [Boardman] doing his Athlete's Hour and Chris is so aerodynamic with that hunched back.
In some ways, that just makes Merckx's even better. He starts so fast. He did the first five kilometres in 5min 55sec, which would have got him a medal in a world pursuit championship at the time; he breaks the 5, 10 and 20km records which Ole Ritter set in a special ride which wasn't an Hour. And he just grunts it out for an hour with sheer brute force.
MY HOUR by Bradley Wiggins, published by Yellow Jersey Press, £20.00
