Hell on wheels

The Hour: Michael Hutchinson. Yellow Jersey Press 2006. 280 pages paperback, £8.99. ISBN 0-224-07519-5

THE BRITISH BEST ALL-ROUNDER (he'd be the first to admit that it's a bit of a misnomer) is an engaging and reflective man, a talented writer, a terrific endurance athlete, and a bit of an obsessive. He told us at Pedal Power that he'd raised his aerobic threshold so high that he couldn't go into the red. This may have something to do with his complete domination of British time-trialling without managing to break out into the big time - the Worlds, the Olympics. By the end of 2002 he'd 'won pretty much everything that was available' and wanted something 'different, exciting' to do next season. 'Why not have a go at the Hour Record?' said David Taylor.

That was the start of what should have been a great and exciting challenge but which became something far more demanding and not always a lot of fun.

At the time when Toni Rominger held the out-and-out record with 55.291 kilometres Peter Keen told Pedal Power that the Swiss had a VO2max of around 90, as high as it was possible for a human being to get. He foresaw that only a breeding programme like that used by the horse-racing industry would be able to produce a rider capable of riding further. When Boardman somehow added a kilometre to Rominger's record the UCI made sure it will never be beaten by banning his bike. Hutch would be attacking what the UCI calls 'The Athlete's Record', which was set by Eddy Merckx in 1972 and had to be attempted on a bike just like his, all contemporary equipment having been outlawed by our governing body: no discs, no tri-bars. It's an idea which is universally regarded as farcical, but the UCI call the shots.

But it was still 49.442 kph, 30.73 mph, for an hour and Hutch just didn't seem able to go fast enough even for ten minutes. A new old bike could give him a position that would cut his power requirement to under 400 watts. With a lot of help from Manchester Velodrome's Andrea Ingram, and a (typically English) frame-builder called Dave Thompson, he got down to 385 watts. So much for the UCI's laughable attempt to prevent the rider getting any help from his equipment
After that, it was down to training; and as Hutch says, no amount of training will make a Derby winner out of a milk-float puller. Fortunately, Hutch has the genes of at least a Derby contender. Now he had only the frame-builder and the UCI to contend with.

Like all UK frame builders in the history of the sport, Dave proved incapable of delivering the record frame in time. Hutch's life became a nightmare. Everybody helped: Dave couldn't (or wouldn't) deliver the frame so it could be tried out well in advance; the anti-cycling UCI and their representative in Manchester were far more stupid, obstructive and arrogant than even I would have thought possible; and even a crap microwave-style restaurant connived at sabotaging our man's preparation with 'Cajun Chicken'. It reads like a pretty accurate account of Britain today - it was certainly somewhere I recognised. There were a few other handicaps, like sunstroke (that's what I think it was, anyway), and what any coach would recognise as severe over-training. Somebody should have made him take more time off the bike. The 'whatever doesn't kill us makes us strong' approach just won't do for athletes. Screw Nietsche anyway, he's never there when you need him.

Now that the Hour is no longer a showcase for the manufacturers' best products its prestige may decline. When Ondrej Sosenka broke Board-man's record in 2005 the press ignored it and the news leaked out via the Internet. Graeme Obree has suggested that the UCI keep a heap of antique bikes and hire them out for future attempts.

The story of Hutchinson's attempts (he tried again later) is dreadfully fascinating, a bit like the tortures of medieval heroine Patient Griselda (see Chaucer). But that's not all: in addition there's the history of the Hour Record, quite a lot of general cycling history, a discussion of doping, and a lot of good humour. Nobody ever needed it more. The general style and approach is clearly aimed at the not-already-well-informed (all right, the layman), but even walking encyclopaedias of the sport will enjoy it too. Incidentally, the Tour de France didn't get to the Pyrenees until 1910, not 1906. If it runs to a second edition, then I suggest that a simple index would be invaluable, because you want to keep dipping into it. Ask for a copy for Christmas.

Ramin Minovi