‘It would be cool to be the fastest of all time’

As he aims to break the 200-meter flying start time trial world record in Turkey the following week, British sprinter Matthew Richardson wants to become the “fastest track cyclist of all time.”

After the Paris Olympics in the summer of 2013, Richardson, who shifted his allegiance to Great Britain from Australia, is attempting to break the record of 9.088 seconds.

Charlie Tanfield will attempt the top hour mark, and para-cyclist Will Bjergfelt will attempt the C5 category hour milestone, making him one of three British cyclists competing for the same track on August 14.

Being the fastest track discipline, it has a nice ring to it, Richardson said.

Before switching to his country, Richardson, who was born in Maidstone, Kent, won two silver medals and a bronze for Australia last summer. He later immigrated to Western Australia at the age of nine.

At the start of the year, he won three sprint titles at the British Track Championships, and he added two golds to his Great Britain debut at the Nations Cup in March on the Konya track in Turkey, where the new attempts will all take place.

Before Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen broke the new flying 200-meter record minutes later, Richardson briefly set a new record for the time at the Olympics in 9.091.

The 26-year-old said he was “confident” going into the week and that the record would soon be broken, a feat that necessitates speeds of more than 80 km/hr.

He said, “I’m pretty confident that I’m doing a really good job.”

After Alex Dowsett, Bradley Wiggins, and Dan Bigham, Tanfield hopes to break the hour record by recording the longest distance he has ever cycled around a track in 60 minutes.

Filippo Ganna of Italy’s current record in 2022 stands at 56.792 km.

According to Tanfield, “I saw this year after the Games as a time when I had the freedom to give it a shot.”

Bjergfelt said he had long wanted to break the 2014 Italian Andrea Tarlao C5 hour record.

The 46-year-old believes that the technological advancements over the past 11 years have significantly increased the distance between two goals.

I think I’ll be in a very, very good position to carry the record forward and advance it further and make it something big again, according to Bjergfelt.

“I’ll be the first C5 para-cyclist to cross the 50km barrier,” I’ll be the first to do so. That would be quite unusual.

The hour record is regarded as one of the most exhausting cycling tests, and Bjergfelt described the difficulty in executing it flawlessly.

You must be very conservative in the first 40 to 45 minutes due to the hour-record. You still need to be on top of the game, but you also need to be truly within yourself, he said, because it always comes back to bite you.