The Fastest Grand Tours Time Trial in History
After Chris Boardman broke the hour record for the first time, Luc Leblanc remarked that if Boardman could break it, half of the pro peloton could. In his first TdF, Boardman caught his minute-man, Leblanc, over a 7.1 km course and set the fastest ever Tour stage in the process.
Rik Verbrugghe holds the record for the fasest ever stage in a grand tour. 58.874 km/h over the 7.6 km prologue course from the 2001 Giro d'Italia. Mario Cipollini holds the fastest road stage (48.521 km/h) from the 1997 edition and Alex Zülle holds the fastest time trial stage (53.771 km/h stage 15) from the 1998 edition.
The fastest ever Vuelta a España stage is held by Rubén Plaza. Plaza won the 39 km stage 20 time trial in 2005 at a speed of 56.22 km/h. This makes it the fastest ever non-prologue stage of a Grand Tour. Igor González de Galdeano holds the record for the fastest road stage. 2001 Vuelta stage 9, 179 km @ 55.176 km/h.
- Fastest Stage
Mario Cipollini 50,355 km/h Laval - Blois (194,5 km) 1999
Pablo Lastras 49,938 km/h Bordeaux - Saint-Maixent l’Ecole (203,5 km) 2003
Johan Bruyneel 49,417 km/h Evreux - Amiens (158 km) 1993
- Fastest Time Trial longer than 20 km
Greg LeMond 54,545 km/h Versailles - Paris (24,5 km) 1989
David Millar 54,361 km/h Pornic - Nantes (49 km) 2003
- Fastest Prologue
Chris Boardman 55,152 km/h Lille - Euralille (7,2 km) 1994
Chris Boardman 54,193 km/h Dublin (5,6 km) 1998
Fabian Cancellara 53,660 km/h Londres (7,9 km) 2007
- Fastest Team Time Trial
Discovery Channel Team 57,320 km/h Tours - Blois (67,5 km) 2005
Gewiss - Ballan 54,930 km/h Mayenne - Alençon (67 km) 1995
Carrera 54,610 km/h Berlin (40,5 km) 1987
Read more about this topic: Individual Time Trial
Famous quotes containing the words fastest, grand, time, trial and/or history:
“Government by average opinion is merely a circuitous method of going to the devil; those who profess to lead but in fact slavishly follow this average opinion are simply the fastest runners and the loudest squeakers of the herd which is rushing blindly down to its destruction.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (182595)
“Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882)
“There comes a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Between us two its not a star at all.
Its a new patented electric light,
Put up on trial by that Jerseyite
So much is being now expected of....”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“What you dont understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (18901960)