Bradley Wiggins Hour attempt tickets changing hands for £300 each

Disappointed fans who missed out on tickets for Sir Bradley Wiggins’ attempt on the UCI Hour record in London next month could have to fork out hundreds of pounds if they want to watch him try and beat the new record set by Alex Dowsett on Saturday.

Some tickets for his tilt at the Hour are now making their way onto ticket reselling sites such as StubHub, owned by eBay, where they are priced at up to nearly £300 each.

There, a single ticket is currently on sale for £177, but a pair together cost £295 each, and road.cc understands that some tickets have already changed hands for around that higher amount.

Original purchasers are told that “Tickets are not transferable and their resale for profit or commercial gain," unless authorised, is not allowed.

But unlike for many other sports events or concerts nowadays, the original purchaser's name is not printed on them.

Tickets for the record attempt at the 6,000 seat Lee Valley VeloPark on Saturday 7 June sold out in a matter of minutes when they went on sale last month, despite costing £49 each, a price level that was widely criticised.

By contrast, however, tickets for Dowsett’s attempt on Saturday cost £11 each for adults, and there were still some empty seats left in Manchester, despite the venue having half the capacity of London – something that, if nothing else, underlines Wiggins’ undoubted drawing power.

As well as that clamour for tickets for his tilt at the Hour, the 2012 Tour de France winner and four-time Olympic champion was also the star attraction at this weekend’s Tour de Yorkshire.

The throng around his Team Wiggins vehicle was comfortably double that around Team Sky’s bus before yesterday’s final stage from Wakefield.

There, he told the Guardian’s William Fotheringham that he expects to beat Dowsett’s new record– but added that if he succeeds, his former Team Sky colleague should come back for another go later in the year.

With the Hour record firmly back in fashion after a rule change by the UCI last year to permit modern bikes and equipment, that could herald a return to the mid-1990s when two British riders, Graeme Obree and Chris Boardman, vied with each other to go furthest in 60 minutes.

Dowsett, who rode 52.937km at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester on Saturday to overhaul BMC Racing’s Rohan Dennis as the current record holder, is the first British rider to break it under current rules after the UCI revised them last year to allow modern track bikes and kit.

Wiggins said of Dowsett’s record: “I think it still leaves me in the same position; I’ll still go for the pace I’ve been training at.”

He went on: “Based on what I’ve been doing in the last three weeks I should be quite a way ahead of that.

“We’ve been training on 54 [kilometres] dead as a guide but it could go one kilometre further or 500 metres shorter depending on conditions on the day.”

Dowsett, who had to postpone his original plans to attempt the record in late February after breaking his collarbone in training, believes he could have ridden further in Manchester.

The Movistar rider insisted on Saturday that he could be up for challenging any new benchmark set by Wiggins.

He said: “There was definitely more in the tank. It was frustrating to be so close to the 53km mark. It was always the plan to just break the record, not blow it out of the ballpark.

“I have experience of the record now. I know what the last 10, 15, 20 minutes are like, I know how to handle the heat.

“I think I can certainly improve and, as things stand, it’s no secret Brad’s going well. He’s been training at 55km pace and I’m sure he’s capable of that.”

Wiggins says that if he does set break that record in London next month, he’d welcome Dowsett having another crack.

“I’d love to see Alex go for it at the end of the year,” he said. “That’s what the record is all about.

“It is what it is. If I set the mark I want to set and people are scared of it, people say it’s beyond them or if they go they’ll fail and look stupid, it will be a shame if it sits on the bench for 10 years like Chris Boardman’s did.

“It’s nice if people are putting themselves up there even if they fail. I’d love to see [Etixx-Quick Step’s] Tony Martin and those guys try it.

“I’d hate it that everyone is trying to get the record before I go for it because they think that’ll be it for years,” he added.