kingjr said:
The question is, should the hour record be about a comparison between athletes, or about finding out how much distance a man on a bike can cover in an hour with state-of-the-art equipment?
When they still had common sense, the UCI clearly answered that question: a comparison between athletes, period.
There has never been two hour records, there's always been one and only one and this incompetent little @#&$%£@§*%£ Cookson killed it with his damned stupid reform. Besides the Hour record, there are only a sh*tload of "hour performances" which are NOT the record.
I keep repeating like a parrot but pseudo cycling fans will never hear me that the article 31 of the UCI ruling in 1914 clearly defined what a bike is:
"Les machines de tous types sont légales, équipées ou non de composants tels que changement de vitesse, roues libres, etc., à condition qu'elles fonctionnent seulement par la force de l'homme, qu'elles ne requièrent pas d'appendice ou dispositif pour réduire la résistance de l'air et qu'elles n'excèdent pas les dimensions de 2 mètres en longueur et 75 centimètres en largeur. Ceci s'applique aux machines à un seul cycliste qui occupent une seule file".
Which roughly translates by (I'm speaking under francophone posters' control):
« Machines of all kinds are legal, equipped or not of components such as gear shifting, freewheels, etc on the ground that they are functioning by the only strength of man, that it does not require any appendix or device to cut wind resistance and that it does not exceed a length of 2m and a width of 75cm. This applies to the machines with only one cyclist who occupies only one line.”
By 1913, Marcel Berthet was already experiencing with "streamliners" that he called "vélo-torpille", meant to cut air resistance (for all those who believe aerodynamic devices are recent discoveries !!!) and broke the 1km standing start record.
In 1933, Berthet at age 47 made hour perofrmances with a new kind of "streamliner" called Vélodyne, covering 48.6km in a first attempt, stopping due to a mechanical in a second attempt while on his way to reaching 52km and covering 49.922km.
Berthet knew that his performances would not be sanctioned as Hour records before he attempted for it but these performances fell under the category: “Bike with special devices to cut air resistance”, in other words, these were the first "Best Hour Performances", 51 years before Moser.
In 1939, Francis Faure bested Berthet's performance in that category with a mark of 50.537 kilometers on a faired recumbent.
This also means none of the riders that set the records in subsequent years were allowed to use the best technology that were available to them since those riders in the 1930's had better technologies AND made better performances.
Berthet was aged 47 and covered a longer distance than Archambaud, Coppi, Ritter, Merckx or even Sosenka ... Same for Faure who was not even a professional cyclist...
Along came Francesco Moser in 1984 with a bike that was clearly equipped with devices to cut air resistance.
I had a lot of debates on the Track section and on the comments of the article earlier this year that celebrated the 30 years of the Moser performances. The truth is that Moser's bike was BLATANTLY illegal and the UCI was too lax with their own rules !! Never any device to cut air resistance! The whole contest was falsified after that, as Théo Mathy pointed out many times...
Merckx lodged a complaint by then and even argued that he had been supplied disc wheels for his 1972 attempt and not given permission. Proof:
Only by 1996, the UCI finally realized their mistake with the Lugano Charter, which some sort of a back to the roots reform and LOGICALLY re-instated the Merckx record, which Boardman broke in 2000.
And then came Cancellara in 2013, preparing for breaking that Hour, the one and only Hour that exist on a normal bike and this incompetent UCI President to stop him by this stupid shameless rule change. The undertaker of the Hour record. Undertaker of cycling.
If Voigt someday tells his grandchildren that he broke the Hour record, I hope that these grandchildren would make a little bit of research and realize the grampa NEVER broke the only real Hour record. The Hour Record is
dead!