A dangerous drop at 130 km/h

In an uncertain kilometer of Highway 305 of Lander County in snowfall (USA), an aerodynamic device passed at a speed of 130 km/h aiming to break the speed record. Indoors, reclining and pedaling, the world champion of track cycling in the kilometer (4 times), in the keirin (twice) and individual sprint (1 time) and bronze in JJ. YES. Rio 2016 and in Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Gamestry to beat a record: reach a speed of 144 km/h in a distance of 8 km take the average speed of the last 200m.

To do this, he traveled to USA along with a group of engineering students from Institute of Technology of Annecy (France) who designed an aerodynamic module in which Francois Pervis (37 years old) pedals lying down. He arrived on September 11 and planned to make the final race on Saturday the 17th but on Friday the 16th, in the last trial, a small stone caused the experiment to go to waste.

The rear tire blew out and Pervis and his capsule rumbled to the asphalt of the road. Diagnosis: fracture and depression of the cervical vertebra and slight bleeding in the lungs after medical tests performed on San Francisco. “I’m coughing up blood,” said the cyclist who also complains of constant pain in his femur. On Tuesday the 20th, he got the doctors’ permission to return to France with a feeling that his record attempt was missed halfway through.

A project of more than 10 years

The engineers of Annecy IUT they sought him out to test the capsule. The students, future aeronautical engineers, work for more than 10 years on an artifact which Pervis, 1’80 m., was so cramped, his elbows pressed against his ribs and he could not breathe deeply. With indoor temperatures that can rise to 60º, the cyclist breathes through a fighter pilot’s mask with a tube that draws in air from the outside. Using two screens, he observes the road through the camera. In the first attempt, he reached 136 km/h in 4 km. but he had to cancel the outings the following days since, in a place with little rainfall, it rained for 3 days and he could only practice inside his van.

pursuit of cycling

Accustomed to a short but intensive effort, he had to change his training habits. This test requires reaching a power threshold of 400-500 watts that he must keep constant for 4 minutes, a style close to the pursuit of cycling, so between May and June he made of 11 races in 15 days to prepare.

Olympic and Paralympic

Pervis has already broken several track records in 2013. In the second round of World Cup celebrated in Mexico, left the clock in 9 seconds and 347 tenths in the 200 meter dash and the next day he broke the world record for the kilometer in 56 seconds and 303 tenths, 2 seconds better than his predecessor. Then Rio 2016 tried to qualify for Tokyo 2021 but in December 2019, the French technical director left him in the selection of cyclists. In March 2020, he announced that he will be the eye of Raphaël Beaugilleta visually impaired cyclist, with him in third place on the podium.

now cyclocross

Pervis he explained that “breathing was not optimal” and admitted that “I was not a quadriplegic for so little.” After a few weeks of complete rest, he plans to fully enter cyclocross where he hopes to be successful.