Everything You Need to Know About Filippo Ganna’s Hour Record Attempt

Tomorrow, Ineos Grenadiers racer Filippo Ganna will attempt to break the hour record at the Tissot Velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland. The 26-year-old Italian time trial expert has smashed world records in the past—including during a first round heat at the Tokyo Olympics last summer—and it seems like he’s more than ready to tackle the hour record, which currently stands at 55.548 kilometers, or 34.515 miles.

The INEOS Grenadiers team will be livestreaming the hour record attempt Saturday October 8, at 1:45 p.m. EDT. You can watch the feed above.

“I’m looking forward to the challenge, even though it’s going to be an hour of pure suffering,” Ganna said. “It will be interesting to see how my body holds up, and just how far I can go—it’s a chance to really test your physical and mental limits. To undertake a prestigious event like this is an important step in my career.”

Earlier this week, the Ineos Grenadiers team revealed Ganna’s Bioracer kit for the record, based on designs from Ganna himself. The mostly black kit features the Italian flag, team logos, and a hilarious play on the Top Gun logo.

You can watch Ganna explain his jersey design in-depth here:

His Pinarello TT bike has been optimized for the hour, and kitted out in black with hints of the Italian flag displayed in lines of white, green and red. But beyond the color scheme, we can’t stop staring at that gear ratio:

MucOff explained that the chain itself took about 25 hours to prepare so it’s ‘the perfect chain.’

The 55.548km record was set in August by Great Britain’s Daniel Bigham—who is now consulting with Ganna on how to break that record, as Ineos Grenadier’s performance engineer. A racer himself, Bigham was able to achieve the current hour record in August as somewhat of an experiment in what could be done on the track when everything was perfectly optimized.

“We want to create a blueprint for future UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot attempts but it’s not just limited to track—every single week the team are competing in time trials on the road and there’s a huge amount of detail that we’ve gone into that will help improve our time trialling in many different respects,” he said before his attempt. “Whether that’s pacing strategies, thermal management or equipment development, it all ties in. There’s so much that we can bring forward to keep the team ahead on the road.”

Now, Bigham’s research will be used by Ganna on Saturday afternoon. After placing only seventh in the time trial at World Championships, the 2020 and 2021 time trial World Champion is likely even more keen on this record, considering the rest of his season was peppered with TT wins in almost every race he entered. Most recently, Het Nieuwsblad reported that his latest 35-minute TT effort on the track put him a whopping 500 meters ahead of record pace, which bodes well for tomorrow.

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