With about two weeks to go, it’s time to review the entrants for this year’s World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC) that will run from Sept 11-17 this year. This event was cancelled two years running due to the pandemic. It was decided that although COVID was still very much present, that in order to ensure some sort of continuity for this event, that it would run with some precautions in place.
The initial racers’ meeting will be on the evening of Saturday Sept 10, and there will be racing starting with qualifying runs on Sunday morning. Further information about the event is on the IHPVA website.
The IHPVA website has a list of entrants as of August 27. There are fewer vehicles than in past years, but the roster indicates that many are aiming to break world records in several different categories.
Here are some brief notes on each team, in the order presented.
Team Policumbent
This powerhouse team is back from the Politecnico di Torino with three vehicles and four riders, with the intent to break records in both men’s and women’s, as well as in arm power.
Andrea Gallo is back with a new bike, Phoenix, and from the figure above you can see that the shape is different than his previous bike Taurus. He went 84.81 mph in 2019, just a bit behind Fabien Canal from the French team. Pretty good odds that he will get a 85 mph hat, and we’ll see if he can break the current world record of 89.59 mph, set by Todd Reichert back in 2016.
Taurus X is a clone of Taurus, and it was ridden to 76.98 mph in 2019 by Vittoria Spada. This time, the team has two new female riders: Martina Stirano, Matilde Vitillo.
Cerebus is an arm powered trike. The rider is Diego Colombari, and he will be trying to break the record of 51.58 mph set by Ken Talbot in Arion 4 (the University of Liverpool).
Bike Seventy Seven
Russell Bridge has been to Battle Mountain twice before, both times riding for the London Southbank University team in their bike “Soup Dragon”. That team has had the worst luck, with their bike arriving late and damaged back in 2018, courtesy of DHL. There were also control issues with the bike both in 2018 and 2019. Ultimately, Russell earned a 55 mph hat in 2018, riding a production velomobile. Subsequently, Russell decided to build a bike of a different design. The build has been documented, both on his instagram feed, as well as in a recent interview with the Laidback Bike Report. The bike is named 77, after the fact that the British record current stands at 76.59 mph, set by Ken Buckley riding Arion 2, back in 2016. This effort is a classic build it in your garage and race down 305 effort, and I am looking forward to seeing how fast Russell can go.
University of Toronto
The HPVDT is back with TITAN, their tandem that set a new multi rider record in 2019. This time, the shell is actually smoothed and painted so the drag should be less than before. The shell pretty much had to be finished as this year’s event poster is based on a rendering of this bike. Bill Kong will be the new stoker, and Calvin Moes will be the captain as per usual. The team may also bring Cyclone, a Vortex clone that was run at ASME back in 2017. The landing gear has been stripped out as there were some issues with the associated doors coming open at speed.
Wahoo
Wahoo is a Larry Lem streamliner that he ran in 2018 going 65 mph. He then brought it back in 2019 with Denise Mueller as the rider. She went 70.6 mph. This time, he has recruited Adam Hari as the rider. Adam built and ran his streamliner N1 in 2019, running it first with an incomplete fairing, but by the end of the week he went 55 mph. He has since built a new bike, but was planning to bring it to WHPSC in 2023. It will be nice to see him one year early, and I’m sure that additional seat time on RT 305 will help him the next year.
Aim 93 (London South Bank University)
This team is back with what looks like a new version of Soup Dragon. The shell shape looks to be the same as before, and there is landing gear once again.
This image from the team website gives a preview of the new internals. It is notable that the steering mechanism looks much more conventional than the Mike Burrows designed original. No doubt the team learned a lot from having to completely rebuild their bike during the event in 2019. Wishing them the best of luck, with their new rider Noah Phillips.
Team 60@60
Peter Borenstadt is back with his DF velomobile. Having gone 60 mph at age 60 riding Completely Overzealous in 2014, he has since run his velomobile, going 55 mph in in both 2017 and 2019. Note that his velomobile is featured on the WHPSC listing on the Travel Nevada Website.
Annecy University Institute of Technology
Annecy had a spectacular showing in 2019, capturing the second fastest men’s record with Fabien Canal at 84.99 mph, as well as the women’s record by his cousin Ilona Peltier at 78.613 mph, both records set with Altair 6. This time they are bringing François Pervis, a track cyclist with a huge list of records, most recently 2015 world champion in the kilo and the keirin, as well as competing in the 2016 Olympics. There was some chatter about him going to the Tokyo Olympics last year and then flying directly to Nevada to complete, but obviously with the event cancellation, that did not happen. With a fast bike and an elite rider, we’ll see how fast he can go.
Team Teardrop
Robert Barnett is a longtime bike builder, WHPSC attendee, and the person that always runs the sprint races in the town itself. This time he has built a trike for Alyssa Miller who will be trying for the Junior Female Single Rider Multitrack record, age 11 years or less. There is no record in this category. For context, the record for a bike in this age category is held by Genevieve Kowalik at 37.29 mph. From the pictures posted to the WHPSC Facebook group, it looks like the trike has the beautiful workmanship typical of what comes out of Robert’s workshop.
To sum up, the total number of vehicles looks to be 10 or 11 at this point which is less than in 2019, which is not necessarily a bad thing since it will allow more chances for people to run down the track. One also never knows what entries might show up at the last minute.
Looking forward to seeing all the teams and the usual suspects back in Battle Mountain.
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