Speed dating
‘We can show you our beer collection. We’re quite into collecting them.’
It’s not what you expect to hear when you pay a visit to a pair of elite athletes, but then Dan Bigham and Joss Lowden, two of Britain’s standout performers of 2021, are anything but your archetypal pro cyclists.
Bigham, 30, is an aerodynamic pioneer and athlete who wears his large heart on his sleeve. Lowden, 34, is a cyclist who arrived on the world stage late into her career. The engaged couple’s performance potential has simmered for years. This season, it reached boiling point over two days in Grenchen, Switzerland, where both rode to Hour records.
Up first came Lowden on 30th September, reeling off 48.405km to break Italian Vittoria Bussi’s existing Hour record of 48.007km. A day later, on the same boards, Bigham swept past Sir Bradley Wiggins’ British record of 54.526km with 54.723km. It was two hours of effort 18 months in the making. Lowden picks up the story…
‘The idea sprang from the Huub-WattBike boys’ [Bigham, John Archibald, Jacob Tipper and Jonny Wale] failed Cochabamba trip in April 2020. They were looking to head to Bolivia to break the team pursuit record, but Covid put paid to that. Dan crunched some numbers and thought I could break the Hour record so I was going to come along, but just for the British record. Costs would
