Nine days after he fractured his collarbone in a training crash, Alex Dowsett and his Movistar Team have confirmed that the rider has been forced to postpone his UCI Hour record attempt scheduled for February 27 in London’s Lee Valley VeloPark.
Dowsett crashed last Tuesday. His team announced the news the following day. He underwent surgery to pin the bone last Thursday, and said then that he would do his utmost to stick to the original schedule.
“We are trying as hard as we can to make The Perfect Hour [the title of the bid] on the 27th of February still work,” he said in a video released on Friday.
“We might have to call it the Almost Perfect Hour because of this here. The team, Movistar, Canyon, Endura, Campagnolo and myself will be doing everything we can to make it still happen.”
Unfortunately that hasn’t materialised and he and the team have had to make a tough decision.
“I’m really gutted this has happened,” he said on Thursday. “I’ve never worked harder for anything and to make this difficult decision with the team and lose this opportunity is a real blow. The positive is that it is a record attempt so we will be attempting it at a later date.”
The team has said that not only was the original schedule unrealistic, but also that there was a risk of complicating the recovery and thus hampering the rest of his season.
“I cannot thank Movistar, Canyon, Endura and the rest of the team partners enough for their continued support as well as my family and friends,” said Dowsett. “Most of all I’d like to thank everyone that’s supported me with words of encouragement both in training pre-crash and words of support and well wishes post-crash, it really was overwhelming.
“I’ll now recover properly and be back to full fitness for the road season and another crack at the ‘perfect hour.’”
It is not yet clear when the new bid will take place. The team said that it would wait until Dowsett recovers, then everyone concerned will decide when the most suitable date is.
There has been a flurry of activity in relation to the world hour record after the UCI relaxed the previous constraints on the bikes which can be used.
The first to break the record in 2014 was Jens Voigt, who covered 51.115 kilometres on September 19 in Grenchen, Switzerland. Next up was the Austrian rider Matthias Brandle, who improved the mark to 51.850 kilometres on October 30 in the UCI’s World Cycling Centre in Aigle.
Since then Dowsett, Jack Bobridge, Rohan Dennis and Thomas Dekker all announced that they would aim for the record.
Bobridge’s bid will take place in Melbourne’s DISC velodrome on January 31, while Dennis will make his attempt in Grenchen, Switzerland on February 8.
Dekker’s attempt will take place towards the end of February in Mexico.