Last night, the Austrian Matthias Brandle beat the hour record by browsing 51.852 km. The rider training IAM Cycling ran 750 meters higher than the German Jens Voigt, the former record holder. He returns to his performance in a UCI press release: 

“At half way I thought I’d got it, I thought I would break the record for sure.” But then: “It got hard. I had no choice but to slow down. I had to try to recover. I was beginning to get cramps. From about 30 minutes to about 45 was very difficult.”

He took up to 70 seconds ahead of the German's performance. But after 30 minutes of racing, he began to lose ground. "After 45 minutes I started to get my rhythm back,” he said. “The closer I got to the end, the easier it became.” Then : "By 50 minutes, I knew that unless something big happened, I was going to do it.”

He expected it to be so difficult. "It was much hotter than it was when we did the big training rides, and I didn’t expect that. I couldn’t have anything to drink, and that made it even harder. But I also felt the crowd, and I knew I was being watched every second of every lap.”

The hour record is the goal of many riders like Tony Martin, Fabian Cancellara or Bradley Wiggins: “I’m on the list, that’s what I wanted. I’m there with some big riders, and now it’s the other guys who have to attack the record. And I’m fine with that. I’ve done what I wanted. I’ll go on holiday, and then get ready for next year.”