Dan Bigham to take on the UCI Hour Record

Bigham, the INEOS Grenadiers’ performance engineer, will return to the scene of his 2021 successful attempt on the British record at the Tissot Velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland.

 

Then Bigham set a new British record with a distance of 54.723 kilometres and this time he is aiming to overhaul Victor Campenaerts’ world mark: the Belgian rider’s UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot stands at 55.089km.

 

Bigham has played a key role in evolving and optimising the team’s time trial performance package across the 2022 season and will use the knowledge from this attempt to further boost the Grenadiers’ performance moving forwards.

 

The attempt will be streamed live on the INEOS Grenadiers’ YouTube channel and Facebook page. 

 

Bigham said: “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. I’m excited about the prospect of seeing what I can do against the clock again, with the support of the team behind me.

 

“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. 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.

 

“And 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.

 

“We want to create a blueprint for future UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot attempts but it’s not just limited to track - every single week the team are competing in time trials on the road and there’s a huge amount of detail that we’ve gone into that will help improve our time trialling in many different respects. Whether that’s pacing strategies, thermal management or equipment development, it all ties in. There’s so much that we can bring forward to keep the team ahead on the road.”

 

INEOS Grenadiers Deputy Team Principal Rod Ellingworth said: “From the moment Dan joined the team we’ve been all in to support his attempts to break the UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot. His work both on and off the bike has been hugely beneficial to the team’s performance across 2022 and we’re excited to see how the lessons learned from this attempt can help us further push the boundaries of our performances."