Former Aussie Matthew Richardson becomes fastest cyclist of all-time

A year and three days since he was a toast of Australian sport by winning his third medal of the Paris Olympic Games, Matthew Richardson has now become the fastest cyclist of all-time -- while pedalling furiously in Great Britain colours.

The 26-year-old Richardson, who caused plenty of ill-feeling among the Australian cycling community when he decided after the Games to switch his allegiance to his birth country, has flourished ever since his ‘defection’.

But the English-born rider’s biggest achievement yet in Team GB colours came at the Konya Velodrome in Turkey on Thursday when Richardson became the first man to smash the nine-second barrier over 200 metres on the track, clocking a landmark 8.941 seconds from a flying start.

His time surpassed, by more than a tenth of a second, the previous record of 9.088sec, set by Richardson’s great Dutch nemesis, Olympic champion Harrie Lavreysen, at the same Paris Games last year.

Richardson sped round the track at the venue, which benefits from the altitude assistance of being located at 1200m, at an average speed of 80.5kph, leaving him to celebrate: “It’s cool to be able to call myself the fastest cyclist of all-time.”

Richardson, who learned all his cycling in Perth after moving from England as a youngster, added: “It was a lot faster than I’ve previously ridden. I was basically just a passenger. I gave the bike a bit of direction and it was just steering itself almost. I rode of lot of it outside the sprint lane, so I know there’s a bit more there.”

Richardson, who was double Commonwealth champion before winning his two silvers and a bronze in the gold-and-green last August, has since been banned for life by AusCycling after he walked away from their program.

But he said he considered his latest achievement, in a special record-breaking day organised by British Cycling at the speedy Turkish velodrome, to be “one of the biggest things I’ve ever done”.

“People win Olympic medals all the time, people win world championships all the time, people don’t break world records all the time, and people definitely don’t ride sub-nine seconds all the time, because it’s never happened before,” he had noted before the attempt.

He wasn’t the only Briton to break a world record as Will Bjergfelt set a world record for the C5 UCI Hour Record, covering 51.471km in 60 minutes. He became the first para-cyclist to break the 50km barrier.