Ellen van Dijk to do hour-record attempt in May

Trek-Segafredo's Ellen van Dijk will be doing an hour record attempt this coming month as she revealed on social media yesterday. The World time-trial champion has been on a stellar run of form over the past year and has decided that the time has came for her to attempt to beat this iconic event in cycling.

In a press release she has said: “This has been a dream of mine for a long time. The hour record is something I always said I would do one day, and now that day is finally here. I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it, a mixture of enthusiasm and nerves, which is normal. You're always kind of on the edge with big challenges, and this is a huge challenge, so it's going to be exciting and scary at the same time."

“It was after last year's World Championships that I brought up the subject again. I had won the rainbow jersey which was my big goal of the year and I told myself and the team it was time for my next dream, the hour record. Then, at the December training camp, we really started talking about it seriously and making plans," she added. Now, those plans are about to come to reality as in May she will be hitting the track in the 23rd of May in Grenchen, Switzerland, for her attempt.

“At the moment I am already training more on my time trial bike, because I will have to sit in that position for a long time. I was already in the wind tunnel on Monday and we also did some track tests,” van Dijk pointed out.

She will have the task of, in an hour, ride over 48,405 kilometers, which is the current hour record set by Joss Lowden in September 2021: “I don't have any distance in my head. I just want to break the distance on my first attempt. Of course it won't be easy. I have a lot of respect for Joss. She has done very well and has set the bar quite high with 48.4 kilometers. It's going to be a very tough hour for sure... We chose the Velodrome Suisse because it is a very fast track. And while an attempt in Mexico, at altitude, might have been even faster, it would have required a completely different preparation," she concluded.