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Yvonne McGregor
Yvonne McGregor on her way to breaking the Hour record in Manchester in 1995. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian
Yvonne McGregor on her way to breaking the Hour record in Manchester in 1995. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Yvonne McGregor interview: on the Hour record, Sarah Storey and Bradley Wiggins

This article is more than 9 years old

As Sarah Storey and Bradley Wiggins prepare to test themselves against the purest challenge in cycling, Yvonne McGregor, who broke the women’s Hour record 20 years ago with a distance of 47.411km, has some advice for them

By Suze Clemitson for 100 Tales 100 Tours, part of the Guardian Sport Network

Yvonne McGregor is in an expansive mood. She’s off on a yoga retreat, she has just run her first 5km in forever without her lungs collapsing and her sports therapy business keeps her flat out. But we have finally found the time to talk about one of the defining achievements of her glorious, if brief, career: the Hour record.

This Saturday, Dame Sarah Storey, Britain’s most successful female Paralympian, will make her own attempt on that fabled record, using it as part of her preparation for the Paracycling track worlds at the end of March. Storey is competing in the race as she was invited by the organisers. Why did McGregor do it? “It was after I won the Commonwealth Games points race in 1994,” she says. “It was one of my first defining moments as a cyclist and at the end of that season I really looked at myself as world class.” She laughs and adds in her rich Yorkshire burr: “I was a little kid from Bradford, how did that happen?!”

McGregor wasn’t the only one reassessing her talents as a cyclist. At the end of 1994 she was approached by Peter Woodworth, Chris Boardman’s manager, with an invitation to join the Mancunian’s Beyond Level Four team. “They obviously saw potential in this woman who came from nowhere,” she says. Her coach would be Peter Keen. “I sat down with the two Peters and that’s where the Hour evolved from – to show people my gold wasn’t a fluke. It was a confirmation of my athletic potential as a cyclist.”

She was, she says, “quite flippant about it”. Still new to the sport, she thinks she was probably “quite ignorant about it, the history of it – for me, it was just another challenge. And it was only an hour!” Like her great heroine Beryl Burton, McGregor was physiologically suited to the effort – both women had the ability to get low in an aerodynamic tuck without the benefit of specialist positions like the outlawed Superman, pioneered by Graeme Obree.

McGregor is interested to see what position Storey will ride, noting that, in terms of the women’s Hour record, there has never been the differentiation between the Best Performance record – with its innovations in equipment and positions – and the Athlete’s record that existed in the men’s sport until the UCI unified the records in 2014.

Yvonne McGregor setting off on her Hour world record attempt. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

“My biggest piss off with the UCI is they banned the Superman but they don’t differentiate between sea level and altitude, where altitude quite clearly makes a difference,” says Storey. Keen, she tells me, once calculated that altitude added a kilometre to the men’s record and 500m to the women’s, “which is what Longo beat my record by,” she adds. This is not sour grapes on McGregor’s part, simply an understanding that, for her, the playing field was not level: “There was no way I could afford to go to altitude and wait two weeks to get acclimatised and for the conditions to be right.”

She feels very strongly that the UCI should set a level playing field for the Hour: “The UCI have got to say it can be attempted on these three or four tracks and altitude has to be taken out of the equation.” What does she think of Thomas Dekker’s mooted attempt set for the Aguascalientes track in Mexico where Merckx, Moser and Longo set their marks? “Just do it at sea level. It’s such a prestigious record the UCI need to set certain variables and certain conditions so that you know the person who gets it is the absolute best.”

Storey may be the only woman aiming to set a new Hour record but the men are queuing up to take a tilt Rohan Dennis’ newly set mark of 52.491km. She feels Dennis got it just right: “The way to ride any endurance track event is to pace it as evenly as you can and Dennis held the most even pace with no massive drop off,” she says, but is most excited at seeing what Sir Bradley Wiggins will achieve. “It’s not often he goes for something and doesn’t get it,” says McGregor.

What does she think Wiggins will do? “I think 55km is a pretty big ask but he could put it beyond 54km because he has that time-trial credential.” Much like Chris Boardman, whose Athlete hour record she describes as “one of the bravest performances he’s ever done” – and the most emotional she has ever sat and watched – for the way the Mancunian was able to raise his game over the closing minutes. “He was losing it and then from nowhere he managed to raise the pace – that takes unbelievable mental strength.”

Sarah Storey celebrates winning gold at the London 2012 Paralympic games. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Because the Hour isn’t just a physiological test; it’s also a psychological one. McGregor broke her collarbone at the end of 1994 and spent the five weeks after having it pinned back on the turbo, such was her commitment to the sport. She emerged “fit as a flea” and went for testing with Peter Keen “and Pete felt the record was on.” From then until 17 June 1995 she spent every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday travelling from Bradford to Hoylake, fulfilling Keen’s scientifically precise training plans before racing at the weekend. “I just got on my bike and did what I was told,” she remembers.

“An hour is nothing in cycling terms,” McGregor says. But she rejects the comparison to a 25-mile time trial: “In a 25 you can get out of the saddle or freewheel for a bit, but in the Hour, once you’re in that position, in one gear, you can’t freewheel. You’re on the rivet for an hour.” McGregor always loved the training, “And they were the kind of sessions you almost relish because you know it’s going to hurt, but when you’ve succeeded in doing that session it’s another box ticked, you’re on course to do this distance, the record is definitely doable.” In June, she rode the National 25-mile championships then went to the track for her last training session. She rode 48 km/h for thirty minutes, getting that all important pacing just right – 48 km/h was the magic barrier McGregor was aiming to break.

“We worked backwards from the distance that was achievable, looking at my physiology and cadence, to find the gear to give me that speed and power,” says McGregor. “Peter Keen put it all into his spreadsheet and then said ‘this is the gear.’” She can’t remember it exactly, guessing she pushed a 52/53x15 on her double disc wheeled, Terry Dolan framed “standard” pursuit bike, which was “nothing like the thin-frame, low-profile bikes the British riders have today”. She says her cadence was on the low side for a pursuiter: “I was comfortable at 95, 100 [revolutions per minute] – I just don’t have the fast-twitch fibres to pedal 120 efficiently.”

I ask McGregor to talk me through the effort involved in setting an Hour record. “The first 30 minutes are fairly comfortable, you’ve trained for it and you have the endurance for it,” she says. “The middle 15 to 20 minutes is when the fatigue kicks in and the last 10 minutes there’s that psychological things where you know you have to keep going and you’re tiring and the mind/body thing really kicks in.”

She remembers what Boardman said: “With the Hour record there’s no second place, you either get it or you don’t – for athletes used to achieving it’s a massive psychological thing.” This is the lure of the Hour for riders and spectators alike: “The psychological battle, when your body’s hurting and your legs are hurting and your mind is telling you ‘it’s only another 10 minutes to keep on top of the gear’ and your legs are screaming ‘I can’t do this!’”

So what advice does she have for Storey? “Don’t set off too fast. Consistency is the key.” She warns against the greatest enemy - the intense, inevitable fatigue. It’s difficult to explain what that last 20 minutes feels like, says McGregor, unless you’ve ridden it. “It’s hard to keep your speed and power up, you’re on a downward spiral.”

McGregor caught a cold the week of her first Hour record and felt she was “off kilter” and that it knocked her off her absolute peak performance. She was nervous that morning, wondering why she was putting herself through it, “But there was a part of me that knew I was never going to fail.”

Where does she rank the Hour in her achievements? Below the Olympics and the worlds, which remain the crowning glories of her brief but impressive career. Partially because “there wasn’t the euphoria of a medal, there was only a small crowd, it was more of a personal achievement.” Partially because, in both her attempts, she didn’t feel she achieved her full potential. You sense how much she would have loved to break that magic 48 km/h barrier.

Her career, she says, was always about getting the best out of herself and she feels she never quite achieved that in the Hour. But she can “shake hands with myself” knowing that what she achieved was done clean, in the spirit of fair play that she prizes so highly. In the end, she has no regrets: “I did what I could do and I held the world Hour record and, flipping heck, you can’t say fairer than that.”

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