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Canyon reveal Alex Dowsett’s Hour record attempt bike

A first look at the Speedmax WHR prototype bike Alex Dowsett will use in his Hour record attempt next year

Alex Dowsett has confirmed he is going to have a crack at the Hour record at the Lee Valley Velopark as part of the Revolution Series in London on 27 February, and today his team Movistar have released photos of the specially prepared Canyon Speedmax track bike he’ll use for the attempt.

26-year-old Dowsett will ride a specially modified version of the Canyon Speedmax CF time trial bike, dubbed the Speedmax WHR prototype. The regular Speedmax was introduced a few years ago and is arguably one of the sleekest and fastest looking time trial bikes on the circuit, with angular tube profiles, the integrated front-end with the custom handlebars and stem sinking seamlessly into the top tube of the frame and concealed brakes.

Except there won’t be any brakes on Dowsett’s bike because it has been transformed into a track-specific bike. The frame looks the same with the vertical dropouts replaced with track-specific dropouts, and a new fork slotting in at the front.

Movistar are sponsored by Campagnolo so it’s a pair of Campagnolo disc wheels front and rear and a Record crankset with a power2max crank-based power meter. Continental supply the Competition model tyres.

The Hour record has come alive in recent months, with Jens Voigt opening the floodgates with his successful ride back in September on his Trek SpeedConcept. The reason for the sudden rush of interest - and it does seem they’re queueing up now to have a go - is mainly because the UCI relaxed the equipment rules involved in the Hour record.

Quite simply, the UCI changed the rules allowing the use of modern track bike design and technology, the new regulations permitting any bike used currently used in endurance track events, like the pursuit, to be used for the attempt. Previously the UCI Hour Record had to be attempted on a traditional drop handlebar road bike with no modern technology, resembling the bike Eddy Merckx rode when he broke the record back in 1972.

And here's a Canyon employee giving the special bike a shakedown ride outside the Canyon office in Germany.

David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

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18 comments

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Paul J | 9 years ago
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Stealth: I'd be willing to believe Obree was "legal", but I definitely wouldn't want to stake much of my money on Boardman having been clean, given Boardman ended up with a number of strange hormone related problems...

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CarlosFerreiro | 9 years ago
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Using Sosenka's mark as a starting point was a kind of "forced work round / smart political move" - choosing any other distance to beat would have involved some kind of admission of having gotten something wrong in the past and lots of raking over negative things, or else would have ended up with Boardman's superman record and likely very few if any further attempts. The kind of power to drag number for the 96 record is scarey  13

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stealth | 9 years ago
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The biggest mistake that the UCI made when 'combining' the two classes of records was that although they took the sensible step of stating that the attempt needed to be on a UCI legal bike (as per the Boardman/Obree attempts in the early 90's) they set the record at the Athlete's mark. I would guess that this is the real reason why it is so popular to 'have a go' at the moment. So, not only will it be interesting to see who will be the first NOT to set a new record, it will also be truly interesting to see who will beat CB's absolute record...
After all, his 4km record has only just been beaten (by Jack Bobridge), and nobody has ever beaten his TdF prologue record. I think that people massively underestimate the performance levels that were (legally) reached by Chris & Graeme 20 years ago. Great days, great days indeed.

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Liaman | 9 years ago
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That Canyon looks like they've made it out of Future.

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Simon E | 9 years ago
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No sensible person expects a sport that is tied to technology to remain frozen in time. Nothing is being destroyed, it's just changing (as it did before). The new (old?) rules have given an apparently dead yet fascinating and easily understood element of the sport a real shot in the arm.

The athlete's hour rules using Merckx's bike as a baseline throw up far more issues than they resolve (if they even needed resolution). If you read Michael Hutchinson's excellent book about his attempt you'll get a glimpse at how complex it is and how the rules were arcane and somewhat irrelevant.

Or perhaps some of you want to return to the good old days of 5-speed downtube shifters, heavy steel frames and watching everything on a black & white TV with just 3 channels (if you're lucky) before your mum lets you make a very brief call on the pulse-dialling bakelite phone in the hallway...

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Leviathan | 9 years ago
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Face it, this category was dead before the recent changes. Indeed we might see a short lived interest in the record and 2015 will be great, but the drama of sport has always lain within the constrain of the rules. Better that we have a clean slate that nothing at all.

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Paul J | 9 years ago
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As for "you can't compare with Merckx" - actually you *could*, that was the point. Bikes in the Merckx era were pretty much as mechanically efficient as today. Indeed, even earlier bikes were. The gains today are in more sophisticated aerodynamic knowledge (minimised by the classic bike regulations, but even then still present - e.g. clothing and fine-tuning the position) and much better drugs.

Even with those advantages, note that Boardman really struggled to beat the Merckx record, and only barely managed it - by 10 metres.

That so few riders were prepared to try this record in public is likely due to strength of Merckx as much as any lack of marketing value to modern bicycle vendors.

The biggest factors, by far, outside of the athlete are aerodynamic- even for thew classic hour. There's air pressure / altitude - and the trade-off between drag and oxygen availability. Then the helmet that is required today is a cost over a bald head, but on the other hand Merck had a leather hairnet with hair exposed so probably not too much difference to a road helmet and perhaps worse than a modern aero road helmet (Boardman's was covered, but still had the ribs showing). Boardman did his attempt in an aero skinsuit soaked in alcohol for a cooling effect. Merckx' clothing was tight for the era but you can still see his jersey flapping a bit, and he had no shoe covers, unlike Boardman.

Anyway, even if you don't agree there was value in the classic hour, why not just add a category?

Why *destroy* the classic hour? That was just needless vandalism.

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bjornalkema replied to Paul J | 9 years ago
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`Why *destroy* the classic hour? That was just needless vandalism.`  41

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Paul J | 9 years ago
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Welshboy & Neil: So there'll be a brief flurry of interest as the current crop of riders look to take advantage of the change in equipment, and teams/manufacturers back them because of that. And then what? Then it's back to a record on a heavily regulated bicycle, and there'll be few attempts again. Unless and until the pursuit bike regulations are changed again to create another aerodynamic advantage for athletes to exploit.

So where before we had the classic athletes' hour and the unrestrictedish upright aero-bike + athlete hour. Now we've got a single hour record that will only ever be interesting for short periods (year or three) after a rule change!

It's become the "Which riders were at their peak in the wake of a rule change?" hour.

What a farce.

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Leviathan | 9 years ago
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This is Shadowfax, the lord of all track bicycles.

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hsam | 9 years ago
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It'd be interesting to know what gear ratio he's going to use....
Well, if you like that kind of thing.

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JohnnyRemo replied to hsam | 9 years ago
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hsam wrote:

It'd be interesting to know what gear ratio he's going to use....
Well, if you like that kind of thing.

Virtually every hour record breaker has done it at approx 102.5 rpm (+/- 2.5%) other than Graeme Obree and (interestingly) the current holder Brandle at approx 97 rpm riding 55x13

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JohnnyRemo | 9 years ago
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The UCI dq-ed Graeme Obree for cutting the nose off his saddle to fit within the regs...

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J90 | 9 years ago
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^ spot on.

In other news, that's the best looking bike Canyon have ever produced. I think it has something to do with the fact that I can only see two Canyon logos on it, instead of the usual twenty seven. They really need to change that about their bikes, and the font too, looks cheap.

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Paul J | 9 years ago
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So, the bottom of this article is bollocks...

Previously there were *2* hour record categories. The "Athlete's hour" category required the use of a heavily controlled, Merckx like bike. The "Best Human Effort" allowed a much wider range of bicycles, such as those Obree and Boardman used.

It was fairly straight forward: If you wanted to test yourself against the classic hour attempts, then you could try for the athlete's hour. If you wanted to try take advantage of aerodynamic gains, there was the "Best Human Effort" category.

The UCI fucked up *both* tracks by unifying the categories. Now athletes must still use a heavily regulated bicycle, however it's arbitrarily been changed to a modern pursuit bike. So, athletes can't compare themselves to the classic riders, they can't compare themselves to Boardman, Obree, etc., either.

It's made a farce of the hour record.

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NeilG83 replied to Paul J | 9 years ago
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Paul J wrote:

So, the bottom of this article is bollocks...

Previously there were *2* hour record categories. The "Athlete's hour" category required the use of a heavily controlled, Merckx like bike. The "Best Human Effort" allowed a much wider range of bicycles, such as those Obree and Boardman used.

It was fairly straight forward: If you wanted to test yourself against the classic hour attempts, then you could try for the athlete's hour. If you wanted to try take advantage of aerodynamic gains, there was the "Best Human Effort" category.

The UCI fucked up *both* tracks by unifying the categories. Now athletes must still use a heavily regulated bicycle, however it's arbitrarily been changed to a modern pursuit bike. So, athletes can't compare themselves to the classic riders, they can't compare themselves to Boardman, Obree, etc., either.

It's made a farce of the hour record.

Not many riders took on the previous records in the 10 years before the rules changed probably because nobody was willing to fund their attempt or give them time off from training for road racing.
The recent attempts at the hour record are being used as publicity for bike manufacturers and are probably funded by them too. With the previous 2 records there was no reason for bike companies to fund an attempt as the Athlete's hour was on a bike years out of date; and the bikes and positions used in the best human effort weren't legal in any other event.

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Welsh boy replied to Paul J | 9 years ago
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Paul J, I see where you are coming from but to me (and a lot of top professional riders too) the change in rules has brought a renewed interest in the hour record. It does allow a comparison between riders of the same generation, it is never going to be possible to compare a modern rider on modern equipment with Merckx but at least the new system does allow comparisons under defined parameters.

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Al__S | 9 years ago
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I wonder if Canyon will take this forward as a production track bike? They do have an aluminium model.

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