Merckx's Hour Bike

The Belgian’s 1972 record-breaker was a technological marvel

- Simon Smythe

When Eddy Merckx announced that he would attempt the Hour record at the end of the 1972 season, all the science and technology of the era was brought to bear. In order for the Belgian to beat Ole Ritter’s 48.654 kilometers set four years earlier at altitude in Mexico City, he literally needed to take his training to a higher level, so to recreate the thin atmosphere ‘the Cannibal’ trained at home on his rollers six times a day wearing a gas mask and breathing a mix of 13 per cent oxygen and 87 per cent nitrogen.