The nine-year-old record was considered definitive and cycling greats such as BERNARD HINAULT and GREG LEMOND felt it was too hard for them. The writer scoffed and said that if Graeme Obree beat Moser he would retire and return to his mamma’s farm to eat pasta. But in one of cycling’s most improbable rises to fame, if not exactly fortune, Obree not only bettered Moser’s distance on the velodrome at Hamar, Norway, but did so at his second attempt on the record within 48 hours. Conventional wisdom has it that it is impossible to recover from an effort such as this overnight, but Obree kept his legs from stiffening up by drinking copious amounts of water so he had to wake up to urinate. Each time he woke, he did stretching exercises to ease his muscles. He followed that up with a world championship in the individual pursuit, beating the Olympic champion CHRIS BOARDMAN, and he added a second world title in 1995. He later wrote a detailed account of his severe depression and suicide attempts.
