Five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx was full of praise for compatriot Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Soudal) after the Belgian set a new Hour Record distance of 55.089 kilometres in Mexico on Tuesday, beating Bradley Wiggins` 2015 record by 563 metres, and making it the first time that the nation had set the record since Merckx did so in 1972. `I have to say congratulations,` Merckx told Belgium`s VTM Nieuws. `It`s an incredible achievement to go over 55 kilometres. I take my hat off to Victor, as I know what it feels like to ride like that for an hour.` Merckx`s record of 49.431km stood for 12 years after it was also - like Campenaerts` ride - set at altitude in Mexico, albeit on an outdoor velodrome in Mexico City, on a relatively standard drop-bar track bike in October, 1972.ADVERTISEMENT It was finally bettered by Italy`s Francesco Moser in 1984, who first rode to 50.809km, and then raised his own record four days later to 51.151km, riding on a `lo-pro` bike with double disc wheels. Various rule changes in the years that followed meant that Merckx`s record once more stood again as a `best human effort` thanks to the lack of modern bike technology used on his ride, but Britain`s Chris Boardman was able to beat it in 2000 on a round-tubed, drop-bar bike in Manchester, England, setting a new distance of 49.441km - and therefore beating Merckx`s 1972 record by just 10 metres. In 2014, the rules were once again relaxed so that standard aero track pursuit bikes - more akin to what Campenaerts used on Tuesday - could be used, and a glut of new Hour Record distances were set over the next couple of years, starting with German Jens Voigt`s distance of 51.110km, and finishing with Wiggins` 54.526km in London in 2015, which no one had since been able to beat. - Brad Wiggins (@SirWiggo) April 16, 2019
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