Italian Filippo Ganna postpones bid to break Victor Campenaerts' hour record to focus on Tour de France

Published 16/07/2022 at 12:07 GMT

Ineos Grenadiers rider Filippo Ganna will not attempt to break Victor Campenaerts' world hour record in August as planned. Instead, the Italian has announced that he will delay the attempt and focus on competing in the ongoing 2022 Tour de France. The six-time Giro d'Italia stage winner will likely make his attempt next year, after September's World Championships in Australia.

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Filippo Ganna has confirmed that he will not make an attempt to break Victor Campenaerts' world hour record in August as previously planned.

The Ineos Grenadiers rider told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport in May that he would make the attempt at Switzerland's Grenchen velodrome in August, but he has changed his plans.

Instead, Ganna will focus on his debut campaign in the ongoing Tour de France, saying "I wanted to have nothing else in my head. Once the Tour is finished, I will decide the date".

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Three years after joining Ineos Grenadiers, Ganna has emerged as one of the world's finest time trialists.

He is the two-time defending world champion, winning the 2021 title in Belgium and a year earlier in Italy.

Any attempt to break the three-year-old record will likely be delayed until after September's World Championships in Wollongong, Australia.

Of the world record, Ganna said: "It is not my priority. Lots of people asked me to do it, it didn't come from me. In any case, we’ll wait a little longer."

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In fact, it seems likely that Ganna will wait until 2023 to make his assault on Campenaerts' mark.

Martin Toft Madsen, Mathias Norsgaard, Claudio Imhof, Lionel Sanders and Alex Dowsett have all made failed attempts to break the world record since Campenaerts set it in 2019.

Ganna has worn a specially-developed "supersonic" bio-racer suit during the Tour's time trial. He finished sixth in Friday's Stage 13 after joining a day-long breakaway.

While he stuck with the breakaway group at the head of the course for most of the day, Ganna was left behind by a splinter breakaway with 12.5km left in the stage. Mads Pedersen of Trek Segafredo took the stage.

In the build-up to this year's Tour, Ganna reclaimed the Italian time-trial title.

The hour record is considered one of cycling's most prestigious records and any genuine attempt to break it naturally garners significant interest. Belgian Campenaerts set the current record on April 16, 2019 at the Aguascalientes Bicentenary Velodrome in Mexico.

He beat Bradley Wiggins' 2015 distance by 563m, stretching the record to 55.089km.

It should be noted that Campenaerts' mark was set at altitude.

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