183.9 MPH on a Bicycle?

On September 16th, 2018, American cyclist Denise Mueller-Kornetic does something no one has ever done before. She rides a bicycle over 180 miles an hour, setting the world record for the fastest paced bike ride ever at a speed that many of us have never even driven in a car. And today we're gonna dive in to how all this happened on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese. I'm going to help guide you through the history of sports so that you can increase your sports knowledge. And today's trivia question is, what kind of car was used to help set the motorized paced speed record? Now, Denise was born into a life of being very active. Her father, Myron, was an ultra-distant cycler. And at the age of 70, he actually rode the entire perimeter of the continental United States, a distance of over 12,000 miles. And he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for this attempt. And her mother would race demolition derby cars. So her family was a unique family, which led her on her path, where she would compete as a junior cyclist in her teens, and she would finish in the top three in the nation and compete at world competitions, where she won the national championship in the road, track, and mountain biking 15 times. And in 1992, at just the age of 19, she retired from cycling, and she went on to work for her family's security company and eventually became the president and CEO of that company. But She always had that itch, and in 2009, she actually came back to cycling while training for marathons and the Ironman Triathlon, where she would actually be trained by John Howard, who set the record in 1985 for the fastest paced bicycle speed at all. 152.2 miles an hour. Now, what do we mean by motor pace time? That means you're not doing it completely on your own. You are pedaling on your own. You're not having anyone pull you, but you're having a vehicle in front of you that is limiting the wood resistance. So you are essentially drafting behind this vehicle, allowing you to reach these incredible speeds. And his record would. Stand until 1995 when Fred Rompenburg would set the record with 167 miles an hour, doing it behind a modified drag race car. And Fred would actually go on to help train her for her world record attempt as well. So with two bicycle speeders in her corner, she decided to go for the speed record as well. Especially when her trainer, John Howard, told her that no women had even attempted to set the speed record. And she began seriously training in 2012. And along the way, she actually won two national titles for her age group. And in 2016, she made her first attempt at the Boonville Salt Flats. Now, if you've ever seen a land speed record done by cars or anything, they always do it on these flats in these deserts. It's a flat surface. Yes, it's dirt. But it's a long, flat surface with nothing in the way, nothing blocking you. And it's a solid surface. It's been a place where people try to. Speed as fast as they can all the time. And in this attempt, she actually. goes for 147.7 miles an hour, establishing the women's world record. Behind a Range Rover, a large SUV to help pace her so she could get to that speed. And she used a. Custom bike as well, which has a unique gear system, which is a two gear system, which one pedal allows over 100 feet of distance. So your one pedal is about three to four times faster than on a regular bike. Which allows you to get more speed. And without the distance, you can do even more. But in 2018, she wanted to be the one to set the record for the whole entire world. And she continued to train. And then she got in contact with Fred. And he allowed her to use the drag race car he used for his attempt. Which was one of the drag race cars which is very skinny at the front. With the front two wheels being very small. And then the engine in the back. Now this was a modified one and in the back it looks like a place where you're going to go vote a little enclave to keep the wind resistance off of her completely and a place for her to tether herself to keep her safe a little bit. Now she's not with this tether it's completely just a safety issue and there's a bar across the back to kind of keep her so she knows like where the distance to be at. Now the challenge with this is she actually has to have a driver keep distance with her. If a driver goes too fast and she can't keep up she won't be able to draft as much if she goes too slow she's going to run into her so it's a constant battle and she had a race car driver she uh holbrook actually helped her now she had been racing multiple different kinds of kinds of cars she's raced stock cars formula formula cars and drag racing cars so she had a wide variety of skills in her racing but what she also had was a connection with denise They met and they instantly connected. And that connection was what really helped them break this record. Because without that connection and that teamwork, they would not be able to work together to get to the speed they needed to get. And so the day came on September 16th, 2018. Everyone was there. Denise's team was there to make their attempt. And there were some challenges as they had just gotten Fred's car. And it hadn't been used since 1995 when Fred used it. So they had to change the tires, tune up the engine. get everything ready, test it so that it would be safe and get it ready for the event. So it was a lot of leg up to it that didn't involve actually Denise riding her bike. Now her bike was also customized as well. It was about seven feet long and it had 17 inch wheels on it that were actually motorcycle wheels, the size of the front wheel of a motorcycle instead of the back wheel. But this would allow her to have more grip and to be able to reach these speeds as a regular bicycle tire cannot reach these speeds. Now they came into this just to break the record. They weren't supposed to go more than 175 miles an hour. And that was more than enough to break the record. But as they're going and you're just going for how fast you can go, you just keep gaining speed and gaining speed and gaining speed. So they continue to speed up and speed up slowly and slowly, slowly. And I'll post a video of this, this actual event. It's very weird and ominous to watch because there's a video from, you can see Denise riding and a video outside of it. And you can just, See how close she is to the car. There's this pole that she's very close to. That's her guide to try to be as close to that pole as she can without hitting it. And so her and her driver, Shea, are working in tandem to try to keep that connection and that speed and communication to go faster and she. Could handle it. They circled the track three and a half times. And then within that final mile, they actually break off the tow rope that she's on and they allow her to pedal to keep up with it. That's what they need for the record. If she's not pedaling, it's not an actual record. She's just being towed behind a car. And so she's actually starting to pedal when they let go. And Denise, she's able to keep up with her. And they feel really good with what they've done. They think they have gotten the record. And they're surprised when they get back to their base camp. And her team tells her that she had reached 183.9 miles an hour. 17 miles more than the previous record. Said by her friend Fred. And put Denise... Again, in the record books, at a speed so fast that many of us can't even comprehend driving that fast, let alone riding a bicycle, as the average bicycle can get up to 30, maybe 40 miles an hour if you're going down a hill. which is very dangerous. It's a dangerous thing to do, let alone going over 100 miles and then approaching almost 200. Now, that goes to show you this record could be broken. It could. Someone could, as technology advances in bicycles, it could definitely be broken. But that doesn't mean it will, because there are many speed cyclists that wouldn't even attempt something like this. It takes a lot of courage to do something like this. And Denise had the backing of some friends that had done it. And that gave her the courage to do it on her own, to not only show that she could do it, but to show others, especially women out there, that a record, no matter what it is, can be broken by anyone. I want to thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. I hope you like this. To me, I can't even fathom going that fast on a bike. I'm lucky to even make it down the road. And these are the stories I love to tell you. And if you love these stories, please leave us a rating and review wherever you're listening. And if you do that, tell us a story that you would like us to cover. And we'll do that just for you, leaving your name, the topic you'd like us to cover in the review. And come back tomorrow for more daily sports history. And the answer to today's trivia question, what kind of car was used to help set the motorized pace speed record? And the answer is, a drag racing car was used. And the same drag racing car was actually used in the top two set times, in the top two motorized paced bicycle times.