The world's fastest bicycles
human speed records from 200 metres to 24 hours and beyond
The fastest humans are those on bikes; here are some of their amazing records.
How fast can you go on a bicycle?
It’s well known that a human being on a bicycle is the most efficient of all ways of translating energy into motion. Over short distances the cheetah is the fastest land animal, its top speed usually quoted at around 70 mph, whereas a human being on foot is much slower: Olympic sprinters peak at about 30 mph and they’re already slowing down when they hit the 100m mark.
By comparison, any fit cyclist on a good-quality road-bike should be able to get up to 30 mph, at least briefly, and top riders can sustain it for an hour or more under time-trial conditions. In short-distance events on the track riders will get close to 40 mph; in the recent World Track Championships, Chris Hoy’s winning time for the kilometre time trial was 1.00.999. The absolute world record, set at altitude in Bolivia, is 58.875 secs by Arnaud Tourant of France (Chris Hoy is currently planning an assault on this record). Remember, this is from a standing start.
In track sprint racing, riders are timed over the final 200 metres and top riders will regularly clock under 11 seconds: again, that’s around 40 mph. In bunch sprints on the roads, even higher speeds are sometimes achieved.
This is really all by way of comparison. What’s the absolute fastest speed clocked on a bicycle? We’re not talking about some form of downhill lunacy here - even your humble scribe can reach speeds over 50 mph with assistance from gravity. What we’re interested in is genuine speed achieved by muscle power and - guess what - a human being is faster than a cheetah!
The main body overseeing this kind of endeavour is the International Human Powered Vehicle Association, which sets rigorous conditions for acceptable records. The outright speed record is based on speed over 200 metres, with a flying start, maximum allowable wind of 1.66 metres per second and a minimal down-slope (less than 1 percent). Devotees have scoured the world, especially the USA, for an ideal stretch of road and for the past few years have focused on a highway at at Battle Mountain, Nevada.
This is where, in 2002, Canadian rider Sam Whittingham reached a speed of 130.36 km/h (81 mph) in the Varna Diablo II. This is a fully-faired, highly aerodynamic recumbent bike: the rider is virtually lying flat and the fairing is taped into position to minimise drag. (Considerably faster speeds - over 150mph - have been set on bicycles in the slipstream of a pace-car but that rather defeats the object.)
Over longer distances, the advantage of the streamlined recumbent is less, but still significant. The greatest distance ridden in 24 hours is around 650 miles (1046.1 km) by Greg Kolodziejzyk, using a recumbent and covering a mind-numbing 1833 laps of a track. By comparison the record for a conventional bike on British roads, as recognised by Cycling Time Trials, is around 520 miles.
Here’s an even more interesting comparison - same rider, same route. The famous British ‘End to End’ (Land’s End to John o’Groats) is an 861-mile route from south-west to north-east extremes of Great Britain. These records are verified by the UK Road Records Association. Andy Wilkinson set the record for a conventional bicycle in 1990 at 45h 2m 18s (since lowered to 44h 4m 20s by Gethin Butler). In 1997 Wilkinson returned, using a Windcheetah recumbent tricycle, and set a time of 41h 4m 22s.
But what if you could train a cheetah to ride a bicycle?
