It looked a bit wobbly from this camera angle off the back of the race car but Denise Mueller-Korenek smashed the old bicycle speed record (All photos by Matt Ben Stone)
Cycling speed world record broken to 183.9mph
Denise Mueller-Korenek is celebrating breaking the cycling land speed record, reaching 183.9 miles per hour.
The former junior cycling champion, now a 45-year-old mother of three, had previously held the record for the fastest woman on a bike.
But now on the salt flats of Utah, in the draft of a dragster race car, she has taken the record outright.
She shattered the previous record set by Dutchman Fred Rompelberg. Thirteen years ago he reached a speed of 167mph.
And while Denise Mueller-Korenek, from California, wanted to break the previous record, she was aiming to barely eclipse it.
Instead, she went much faster than expected. She only found out just how fast when she had come to a stop at the end of her effort.
Advertisement
Her bike was partially fixed to the car she was drafting behind as she set off and got her speed up.
Related News
But once she reached 100mph the cable linking her bike to the car was set aside and she was on her own.
In the footage below, salt can be seen coming up from the wheels of the car. A special unit was built onto the back of the dragster to keep the maximum amount of breeze off her.
However, given the speeds she hit, her bike moved around a little. And on a couple of occasions she came close to clipping her front wheel off the side of the unit on the back of the car.
But she stayed upright and broke her record. She was understandably delighted once she realised just how well it had gone.
"It was a crazy wild ride to 183.9 mph,” she said of what is an incredible record on a bike.
“But it was so worth the sacrifice and years of focus on becoming the fastest human on a bicycle in the world. We weren't supposed to go more than 175,” she said.
Topics
