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Ironman Triathlete Breaks Canadian Cycling Record
Ironman Triathlete Lionel Sanders has broken the Canadian hour record for cycling.
The 32-year-old, from Windsor, Ontario, rode 51.304 kilometres in 60 minutes on Friday at the Mattamy National Cycling Centre velodrome in Milton, Ont.
The previous record was held by Track cyclist Ed Veal who cycled 48.587 km in the same velodrome in 2017.
The world record of 55.089 km was set in 2019 by Belgian pro cyclist Victor Campenaerts.
“My glutes are fried,” said Sanders. “They don’t work anymore.
“I know my position in the hierarchy, but I hope that the cyclists appreciate that triathlon cycling has come a long way.
“We’re not completely at the level that the single-sport athletes are, but we’re not that far off.”
The event, which was streamed live on YouTube, saw Sanders average 17.194 seconds per lap over 205 on a solo ride.
Sanders, who is an ultra-endurance athlete, trained at the venue just half a dozen times before breaking the Canadian record on Friday.
“Learning the velodrome on a very tight timeline, it was expensive to do the training, five hundred dollars every time I went there to do a two-hour session there,” he added.
“I didn’t have an infinite bank account to do this so it was purely a passion project.”
/Stewart Sports news editor
