The Italian cyclist Filippo Ganna has set a groundbreaking world record in the 4,000m individual pursuit, posting a time of 3min 59.636sec to win gold at the world track cycling championships in France.
Ganna is the first rider to break the four-minute barrier at sea level, with his feat at the Quentin-en-Yvelines Vélodrome coming just six days after he set an hour record in Switzerland. The 26-year-old covered 56.792km at the Tissot velodrome in Grenchen, breaking Dan Bigham’s previous record by 1.244km.
“It’s been an amazing week. I tried to do something special with the hour record, and I realised one of my dreams, and I tried to do the individual pursuit record too,” Ganna said at the venue outside Paris. “I do it and now we think it’s just [time] to celebrate and recover a little bit, because this has been a really intensive season.”
Ganna took nearly three-tenths of a second off the previous mark of 3:59.930, set at altitude in Mexico by the American Ashton Lambie…
This article was written by Reuters and PA Media and originally published on www.theguardian.com