Tuesday 30 September 2008

One-Tenth the Speed of Sound!

On September 18th, Canadian Sam Whittingham raced the Varna Diablo III to a world record speed for a human-powered vehicle: 83.22 mph, or 132.5 km/h. This is equivalent to one-tenth the speed of sound.

Sam lives in British Columbia and runs Naked Bikes, building custom frames. One of his creations was "Best in Show" at the Handbuilt Bicycle Show in Portland this year and was purchased by Lance Armstrong. He has raced for the Canadian national cycling team and set previous records in other iterations of the Diablo.

Congratulations to Sam and the Varna team!

3 comments:

Lily on the Road said...

I'm sure that I left a comment here earlier...

That is an incredible clip...to bad the couldn't have positioned a webcam inside the vessel....now that would have been great to watch!

Nick said...

That is truly amazing.

Anonymous said...

The man who designed the HPV in this clip, Georgi Georgiev, is a neighbour of mine. His shop is amazing, like a mad scientist's. Here is an article from the local paper

http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkkFFEAZFFmbqnvQLb.shtml

Cheers from Gabriola!