The new highest speed that has been achieved on a bike is now 296 km/h. The record has been achieved by a 45-year-old woman named Denise Mueller-Korenko
Of course, achieving such a speed isn’t easy to do on a bike. This particular record has been done using a vehicle the break the air in front of the bicycle. And that vehicle was nothing less than a dragster. The record has been achieved on a salt plane where many of speed records have been broken.
Of course, a special bike was needed as well. It has a completely unique frame with an extremely sloped frontal fork and a prolonged wheel-base to increase stability. The wheels might surprise as you they are extremely small as there exist no wheels for a bicycle that could survive such speeds. That’s why only 17” wheels from a motorcycle were used. The frontal fork uses suspension so the rider doesn’t fall off on the first bump. To even reach such a speed, the bike needs a good transmission. This particular bike uses a transmission with 62 teeth in front and 12 teeth in the back. And on top of that, the transmission is doubled at the back.
Getting started with such a hard transmission would be close to impossible but the world record rules allow the bike to be dragged to up to 145 km/h. This is what was done by the dragster (apart from breaking the air). Plus at higher speeds, the air behind the car would actually create a suction effect making it easier for the person attempting to break the record so the aerodynamics had the be constructed in a way so they are not influencing the record breaking attempts.
So, now you might think, it might be easy to ride a bike behind a car. Well, you are wrong. The former American champion in cycling is still training further and during this attempt, she managed to output roughly 700 Watts. That is more than enough to power for example one hell of a powerful computer.
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