Ole Ritter and the Hour Record.

Posted on December 16, 2009 by big jonny

The Hour. Ritter had it in 1968. Lost it to Merckx in 1972. He tried to retake the record in 1974, beating his own prior record, but failing to match the massive 49.431 km of Merckx.

Merckx’s record stood firm until Francesco Moser broke it in 1984. The story continues with the efforts of Obree, Boardman, Indurain and Rominger. Today we’ll stick with Ritter’s 1974 attempt.

The Impossible Hour Part 1 of 5

The Impossible Hour Part 2 of 5

The Impossible Hour Part 3 of 5

The Impossible Hour Part 4 of 5

The Impossible Hour Part 5 of 5

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The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

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11 Replies to “Ole Ritter and the Hour Record.”

gutpile on December 16, 2009 at 9:30 am said:

Forty nine thousand four hundred and thirty one kilometers in one hour?! Holy fuck! Eddie Merckx is GOD!
big jonny on December 16, 2009 at 9:46 am said:

Yeah, that was supposed to be a period & not a comma… Makes a fair bit of difference, doesn’t it?
Big Red on December 16, 2009 at 12:16 pm said:

Really gutpile? You’re just being a asshat huh?
burt.hoovis on December 16, 2009 at 6:07 pm said:

I like how Moser took a bunch of EPO, then went out and rode a faster time when he was 41 than he did back when he was still racing.

Italian cycling innovation, baby…!

Thanks,
Burt
Gnome on December 16, 2009 at 7:48 pm said:

Moser took EPO or doped? How early in the timeline was EPO the drugas du jour?
mikey on December 16, 2009 at 8:46 pm said:

cooked it up himself, dude’s first career was in protein biochemistry.
reverend dick on December 17, 2009 at 1:06 am said:

Thanks for posting this.
3rd place on December 17, 2009 at 1:54 am said:

Incredibly wicked cool TV to watch. Boy, I’m stoked. One thing I just cannot understand, though, is why someone would want to ride right behind a motorcycle?!?!? And, a Benotto bicycle weighing 450g? That must be on the moon, right?
Buck on December 17, 2009 at 7:13 am said:

5 kilos 450 grams

Listen again 3rd place.
mattchew on December 17, 2009 at 10:03 am said:

still, that’s like <12 lbs. wicked light by any standard
mikem on December 17, 2009 at 12:37 pm said:

Awesome footage. I sure wish that more guys would give this ago. It seems like Obree’s superman bike threw a monkey wrench into things. It hasn’t really been attempted in quite awhile-has it?