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What is the top speed hit during a sprint on flat ground in a road race by a professional sprinter, say, someone like Cavendish?

Is there an official record for this and if so who holds it currently?

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Not a complete answer really, but I've had a scan through this TdF data Twitter account and Greipel's winning speeds from his two wins this year are an average of 59.58 km/h over the last km and a peak speed of 67.03 km/h.

Pretty quick.

Edit: more stats for nerds here.

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  • Is that recorded officially? – andy256 Jul 9 '15 at 4:27
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    Coming from Dimension Data who are doing the timing for the tour this year. You can see their little black trackers on the back of the riders seats. – alex Jul 9 '15 at 4:29
  • Of course, TdF is not all flat. – Daniel R Hicks Jul 9 '15 at 11:47
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The highest speeds on bike similar to road bikes is the 200m track sprint, where the record is 9.347 seconds, for an average of 77kph.

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Official record? No. It's simply not something the UCI has tracked nor has there really been an accurate way to track this. This is the first year where the entire peloton will have their data tracked during the Tour. Cycling isn't like Formula 1 where nearly every datapoint is meticulously tracked. The upside of the UCI weight limit on bikes is that most bikes can now easily come in under the limit and this in turn leaves room for the bikes to carry data trackers, power meters and cameras without incurring any perceived weight penalty. Prior to the UCI weight limit you'd rarely see a racer using a powermeter in competition because they added extra weight.

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  • "Prior to the UCI weight limit you'd rarely see a racer using a powermeter in competition because they added extra weight." - This is a huge assumption, power meters were not at the weight they are are today nor as accurate, simple to use, or many other factors back in 2000 when the limit was introduced. Pretty rare to see a bike these days without a power meter in any serious cycling. – sjakubowski Jul 10 '15 at 17:54
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    It's not an assumption. I'm a former team mechanic and it reflects what I've seen on pros bikes. – ChrisL Jul 13 '15 at 19:04

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