Since the Centre opened in September 1994, records have been broken - with substantial improvements. On June 17th 1995, Britain’s Yvonne McGregor broke the women’s world hour record increasing the existing 47.112 Kilometres covered by Catherine Marsal of France by 299 metres to 47.411 Kilometres, about 1¼ laps of the track. The record has since been beaten at altitude in Mexico by France’s Jeanie Longo.

At the 1996 World Track Cycling Championships world records were broken and then broken again. The most famous of these was for the 4,000 metres Individual Pursuit by local hero Chris Boardman who astounded the cycling world, riding to the title of World Champion in a time of 4min 11.114 seconds before an enthusiastic capacity crowd, having taken over 8 seconds off the record that existed before the Championships started. Nine days later, on September 6th, he set a new world record riding solo on the track for an hour, covering 56.375 kilometres (in front of a packed house of thrilled spectators) - over 1 kilometre more than that covered by the previous record holder, Switzerland’s Tony Rominger.

In 2000 the UCI re-defined the rules for the hour record, renaming it the ’Athletes’ record. This meant that any subsequent breaking of the record had to be on a conventional bicycle, with no aerodynamic aids. On Friday 27th October 2000, during the World Championships in Manchester, Chris Boardman put on a show of determination to break the record held by the great Eddy Merckx of Belgium and set the new record of 49.441 Km – an additional 10 metres.

The event for which the facility was built, the XVII Commonwealth Games, culminated in the World Team pursuit record, broken at the 1996 World championships, coming back to Manchester. The existing record, the first ride ever under 4 minutes, was broken at the 2000 Sydney Olympics by the team representing Germany with a time of 3 min 59.710 seconds. The Australian team beat the English squad in the Manchester Commonwealth Games final with a faultless ride and a new record of 3.59.583.

In January of this year (2005), the Manchester World Track Cup also saw 33 year old Darren Kenny, double Paralympic Gold Medallist on the Track and silver medallist in the combined road race and time trial, break the Hour Record (riding 41.81718km) for the disabled category of CP3. It was quite an astonishing ride by Darren who had his track coach Marshall Thomas track-side to guide him through the record attempt in front of a vociferous crowd who banged the boards as hard as they could to urge him on.

To view the records for the Manchester Velodrome, click here >>>