"Ungodly amount of support from Ineos" the key for Hour Record, Dan Bigham says

Dan Bigham, a performance engineer at INEOS Grenadiers, has became the new Hour Record holder as he demolished Victor Campenaerts' past time in Grenchen yesterday, an achievement that comes on top of a successful career.

"Actually, it was really good. My best paced hour by far," Bigham said after completing the event. "I was a bit ahead of the split for the first half. It was quite daunting, because I’ve never ridden that pace for an hour before. It’s a bit mind blowing, pretty epic". After Filippo Ganna decided to postpone his attempt this August, the team's performance engineer and former pro Dan Bigham, an aerodynamics expert and experienced time-trialist aswell as track specialist, took the opportunity.

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The odds were on the Briton's side, however the 60 minutes had to be ridden in Switzerland. "You’ve not got it until you’ve actually ridden the laps. That’s the scary thing. You’ve got the pace, but you don’t have the distance. I actually had a bit of a wobbly in my head, just after half way," he described. "How am I going to ride 16.0s in the next half an hour, that’s nuts. It never bit. It was easy, in control. In my head, I was like just get to twenty minutes to go then push on a bit".

Sure enough his pace went up in the last half of the effort, and Bigham started to gain unrecoverable time on Campenaerts' record. He ended up riding almost an extra 500 meters than the previous record, with 55.548Km/h ridden in the space of one hour - seeing a time that will be even more difficult to top in the future.

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"An ungodly amount of support from Ineos, that is what has been the step change. Not just the equipment, and the CDA. It’s all the execution, the physiology. All the thermal, nutrition, training interventions. It has absolutely stepped it up, and the support I’ve had around me is second to none," Bigham stated. All the preparation has led to great success, as the title as planned is now within the team - although not in one of it's riders.

"It has made life a whole lot easier just coming here and performing. Even this week, not worrying about my bike, mechanics, timing, the livestream, nothing. I’ve just sat at home, not even cooked dinner. I wake up, I don’t even have to put my stuff in the dishwasher. It is everything you’d expect from this level of team," he detailed

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Regarding his time spent on the boards, he has also commented on what was going through his head: "Early on the line was really good. You start to worry about if you clip a pad and go down or puncture, there’s no time to respond, so you play a bit safe. It’s probably the wise thing to do".

"It was actually really enjoyable. It’s quite nice when you’ve got that safety net. In my head I wanted 55.5, so to put another 48 metres onto that I’m pretty happy," Bigham concluded. He's set to stay in the throne for a while as currently there is no other rider set to challenge the new time.

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Dan Bigham

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