SUSO

VARNA DIABLO

One man can cycle faster than anyone else on earth.

You’ve probably seen them, the guys who kick back almost flat on those recumbent bicycles, darting in and out of traffic, too low to show up in people’s mirrors and - to my eyes at least - perennially on the verge of losing control. Georgi Georgiev’s Canadian company Varna builds a whole range of them; one, not for public consumption, is the Varna Diablo III, a bike that, ridden by Sam Whittingham, broke the world record for a human powered vehicle last week out on the flats of the Nevada desert at the annual World Human Powered Speed Challenge.

Competitors usually afford themselves only one run a day; the exertion is too great. But as the sun began to set over Nevada last Thursday, Whittingham saddled up for a second run, and, on a road that’s deteriorated over the last few years, broke the record at 82.3 mph: “I was flying down the course and was getting bumped around like crazy. It was one of the scariest runs of my life.” Whittingham had already broken the record three years in a row between 2000 and 2002. Clearly he wanted it back.

Categories Endeavour Tags speed

By on 26/9/08