Back in the pre-Cambrian Francesco Moser was said to be planning a record bid either in some Italian contraption that I'm not sure ever made it past the mockup stage or in Wolfgang Gronen's Vector – which did exist – but this never happened, though he certainly did a few test runs in the latter. Wolfgang's main engine during the time he was involved in the sport was sprinter Gerhard Scheller, who competed in for West Germany at the 1984 Olympics and was a triple national amateur champion, but they never managed a serious world record attempt because Money. And then they got beaten by Sweet Surprise, a bike knocked up by two Polish monkeys in a shed, so Wolfgang bought the machine on the spot, renamed it “Vector 007” and continued to run it for various riders into the mid-1990s.
Wolfgang's son Andy was later involved with the Whitehawk team, one of whose riders was sprinter Jan van Eijden, four times German champion and World Champion once each in the individual and team sprint disciplines. He competed at BM at least once while he was still active on the track, before going on to coach for Team GB up until about a year ago. IIRC the Whitehawk and its Tomahawk predecessor were originally designed to attack the Hour record with Lars Teutenberg riding; going to Nevada was something of an afterthought. He was well behind Sam and the Varna.
Fast Freddy Markham was on the US squad for the Moscow Olympics* – having been first reserve for Montréal – but then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and President Carter wouldn’t let him out to play. The first Battle Mountain event was twenty years later, though Freddy had scooped the Dupont Prize for the first person to crack 65 mph back in 1986, having already been the first over 50 mph in 1979. Freddy and the various iterations of Gold Rush were unstoppable in the 1980s but then they came up against Matt Weaver and the Cutting Edge at Portland International Raceway (in those days many streamliners could also go round corners) and got trounced. That was Matt's first bike race ever and if he’d ever managed properly to finish any of the bike projects he started rather than abandoning them to go on to his Next Big Idea who knows where we'd be now?
Chris Huber, who set the 1992 record in the Cheetah that stood for eight years, was a pro roadie at the time for the USAnian Coors Light team**, and who seems to have been most successful at criteriums. I've read that the Cheetah was originally supposed to have been ridden by a Danish pro by the name of Johnny Frank but Mr Google has never heard of him. The bike itself was developed from a machine built by UC Berkeley, who later held the tandem record for many years with the Bearacuda. Until it was beaten by a machine knocked up by USAnian monkey Larry Lem in his back yard in LA.
Jason Queally and François Pervis competed at BM the year after their final Olympic appearances, and Queally wasn’t going to get anywhere near the record in the Blueyonder, because it was shit***. The year he failed to crack Freddy's 15 y/o speed was the same one that Sam Whittingham (formerly a national level track rider) in the Varna broke his own record four times in a week and became the first to exceed 80 mph, in a machine knocked up by a Bulgarian-turned-Canadian monkey sculptor in a shed on a small island in BRITISH Columbia. Alas that was 2001 and I didn’t go until 2002 chiz.
François has indicated he's anxious to have another go and it appears that the IUT Annecy team are both willing and able to build a new bike, which should fit him better. Previous Altaïr 6 pilots Fabien Canal (mountain biker) and Ilona Peltier (did some junior cyclo-cross) are a fair bit smaller. Team boss Guillaume de France did ask Ilona if she wanted to have another go this year. “Too busy”, she said.
Team Policumbent's Andrea Gallo is a useful amateur roadie while Matilde Vitillo is a current pro on Italian road squad Team BePink and even has her own page on Wikinaccurate. I believe their other rider, Martina Stirano, is some kind of mountain biker, m'lud. Neither of the new recruits made TaurusX go as well as Vittoria Spada in 2019, though Martina was constantly nobbled by the wind and Matilde only arrived midweek because day job. BRITISH record holder Ken Buckley is likewise an amateur roadie and performance coach while his Liverpool team-mate Yasmin Tredell was an Olympic standard rower whose participation in the Rio games was, I heard, thwarted by a shoulder injury. She was advised by the doc to take up cycling while she recovered. I do not think this was quite what said mediquack had in mind.
* The Olympics back then being nominally for amateurs only.
** Alongside the likes of Alexei Grewal, Davis Phinney and Tyler Hamilton.
*** As noted by Russell with his jubilant declaration about two northern monkeys in a garage beating the Olympic champion and the F1 team.
