Ellen van Dijk makes cycling history with new hour record

Ellen van Dijk is a time trial specialist and has been crowned world champion on five occasions

Ellen van Dijk has made history by setting a new women’s hour world record on Monday.

Time trial world champion Van Dijk passed Lowden’s record in the 58th minute of her attempt.

“This is actually quite different from a time trial,” she said.

“For an hour you just see a thick black line on the track. It’s a real challenge and I spoke a great deal with the team psychologist.

“At 45 minutes I thought, ‘OK, I need to accelerate’. I thought I was accelerating but I think I was only slowing down. That meant that this was it for today and I am very happy that I broke the record.”