Fastest Woman in the World - Interbike 2017
Denise Mueller-Korenek owns the women's speed record for cycling, at 147 miles an hour (237.74 kph) and now, the San Diego, California, resident is training to beat the world record: 268.831 kilometers an hour (167.044 mph), set by Dutch cyclist Fred Rompelberg. Both records were posted at the Bonneville salt flats, drafting only inches behind specially modified vehicles. Denise drafted a modified SUV, while Fred tucked in behind a similarly equipped dragster. The blistering speeds the two attained were made possible by eliminating most of the wind resistance, so the riders only needed to overcome the rolling and mechanical friction of the bicycle and the wind drag created by the spinning wheels. No small feat, it turns out.
The wheels are based around 17-inch motorcycle rims. The frame is carbon fiber and the gearing is so tall that Denise is towed up to 90 miles an hour before she can begin to pedal the bike.
The frame is carbon fiber, but it isn't lightweight. At the speeds she is travelling, there is no tolerance for frame flex. KHS is her sponsor, which gives them bragging rights that are enviable, to say the least. There is no fairing. The rider is tucked inside a "box" constructed behind a modified SUV and must remain within a foot or so behind a safety bumper in order to escape the wind. Even if she did have a clear view of what was ahead, Denise doesn't have the luxury, as her life, and the record she is seeking is dependent upon maintaining that tiny gap between the steel tube that protrudes from her bike and the safety bumper inside the box. She says the speed run is only four miles, and she is already over 100 miles an hour after mile one. Oh yeah - and she is wearing a ten-pound leather suit.
After she is towed up to 90 miles an hour, Denise pulls a lever on the handlebar to release the latch on the safety bumper to release the cable. From then on, it's up to her lungs and legs.
A two stage drive is needed to attain the record. "It doesn't look pretty," says Denise. "But. it gets the job done." One revolution of the pedals equals 150 feet of forward motion.
Wheels must be balanced and the tires feel as it they are solid rubber. Salt corrosion is apparent everywhere on her bike.
Four spokes had pulled out of the hub. No telling how that went down. There is no freewheel. Denise is also the fastest fixie rider in the world.
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Good luck starting a bike with that sort of gearing from zero!
-Im asking for Pinkbike.
So yeah, mountainbikes have become amazing but that's still despite UCI regulations in competition.
80 mph behind a car on an airport runway. With one (very large) chain ring and a fairly normal frame.
Only if you were pedaling it inside the plane... oops, now we're just getting picky.
All these weenies would be too scared to even do the towing part... impressive.
A totally political product wanting to look like a bicycle but not be a moped.
I completely get recumbents but wouldn't want to ride ine in traffic as you are quite low.
There was some talk of the wheel size law being relaxed for MTB as it was only introduced as a safety measure when drafting as a smaller front wheel lets riders get closer to the bike in front. Hopefully this happens next year because 29F 275R is probably very good.
As for the dissimilar front-rear wheels, it is a funny one. I recall an interview with an UCI official. I think it was Dirt magazine with Chris Ball but I'm not sure. He said they are open to dropping the rule but they principally don't change rules for next season as obviously brands are already developing stuff for that season. So earliest would be 2019. Which is silly in a way because it probably takes more for brands to modify their frames to accept 29" wheels in the rear than it is to tweak the geometry to work with dissimilar wheel diameters. Even sillier of course is that this only applies to rim diameter, not the outer tire diameter. I sometimes wonder whether these people at UCI sometimes also smash their heads against the wall about all the bureaucracy and the way they've defined their rules.
But yeah, that doesn't stop Liteville, Foes, Specialized, Banshee and the regular rider assembling their own bikes to actually ride the bike they believe is best. Some say racing is at the forefront but in reality, racing sometimes forces itself into a really conservative position.
It would be interesting for someone ti challenge the rule but I guess they would face disqualification. You wouldn't do it if you were to 10 but further down the field it maybe worth a go.
Yeah the UCI are just a bunch of road loving bureaucrats who see mtb as an innecessay evil. IMO the sooner we ditch them the better.
www.channel4.com/programmes/speed-with-guy-martin/on-demand/55889-001
why no bigger wheels?
I expect they have trouble finding rims and tires certified for the speed she's going. And it was 17" rim diameter, was it? My experience was that a so called 20" bicycle rim actually takes a 16" moped tire (more or less) as the moped tire diameter refers to the rim diameter whereas the bicycle tire typically refers to the "expected" outer tire diameter. So yeah, what she's running may approach something like 22" in bicycle language.
Why v-brakes?
If she brakes, it'd be the end of her attempt. The main challenge will be to take all that heat. And a chunky rim like that is simply going to absorb more heat than the brake rotors we have in cycling. It may blow up a regular bicycle tube but it shouldn't harm a tire like this.
Why the ridiculous amount of seatpost setback?
In mountainbiking we've come to expect very steep seat tube angles because nowadays bicycle reviewers judge a bike by how steep you can climb whilst seated. So to compensate for that, seat tubes have gotten steeper. Same probably goes for road cycling. Climbing is critical. She's not going to climb with that bike so she simply chooses the seat tube angle that works best for seated tucking pedaling. And apparently for her that is what we see here. A seat angle not compromised for climbing (and not compromised for limited hip mobility many of us suffer from).
I never knew just how deep goes the average level of insecurity and misogyny in this sport.
Have non of you seen Guy Martin trying to set the UK record, drafting behind a truck on a beach?
He said it was the most horrendously shit-your-pants scary thing he's ever done, and he's got more talent, experience and balls than any keyboard warrior on here.... and he got NOWHERE near Denise's record.
The next time you draft a bus, at 30mph, try getting within ONE foot of the back of it, right in the middle so it's the only thing you can see, and stay there for a mile. My money says not a single one of you wouldn't bottle it after a few hundred yards.
What makes you so sure that this woman is so much better than everyone on this site? I guarantee you there's guys here who can fly down a mountain and pedal on flat land way faster than her. We've just never got behind a racing truck on a salt flat.
Add in RST forks & it just sounds like a recipe for disaster. Good luck girl.
Quite a daring speed on a bike and not something I would attempt. I've been over 150 mph on a superbike and that was realllly fast.
I still don't consider it a true land speed record though as she was not really pedaling and overcoming the typical obstacles that speed freaks have to deal with. Start from zero and see how fast your body can overcome those things. That's a thing.
Riding so close to the car at that speed is remarkable, moreso when you see that she periodically hits it with a bumpstop on her handlebars. Yikes.
But what really gives me the willies... After she hits the record, she backs off from the protective box on the car to slow down. I'd imagine there could be all kinds of little air vortexes that you run into at that speed, as you slowly leave the protective chamber of the car. I've hit 65MPH downhill on my road bike, and well remember cresting a small hill in the middle of a 5000 foot descent in Utah and being faced with an updraft that made handling very... interesting... for a few seconds. I imagine on a bad day she'd have that in spades.
I do think that calling this a "cycling" record is silly; perhaps a "drafting" record? But for that matter the real cycling record is set on a recumbent that looks nothing like a real bike. It's impressive nevertheless.
Sure it was assisted start and wind shield and whatever, but hey, she's riding a bike totally blind at f*cking 247 kph!!
Have you ever been that fast on ANYTHING??
Just check you tube, a that dutch guy they mention, slightly moved out of the wind shield once; you suddenly crash against a wall of air at that speed and shit happens. Guy crashez and got 24 broken bones.
Sure this woman's not Sam Hill, but f*ck, that's not what she's trying either.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhv0jrsAW5w
m.youtube.com/watch?v=1gq24FxwFNA
Anyway still takes serious balls to ride a bike from 90 to 160 or whatever.
Anyway, does anybody know the reasoning behind the small wheels? It seems weird if rolling resistance is your major enemy. Someone above mentioned centripetal force but that is wrong since that decreases with wheel size for a given ground speed (or it's equal if you account for a linear increase in mass). The only reason I could think of is less chance of being knocked to the side by small lateral air flows.