Every other sport keeps score. Cycling keeps time.
You can lead a Grand Tour for three weeks and lose it by eight seconds. You can ride an hour alone on a track, against nothing but the clock, and walk away calling it the hardest thing you've ever done. The sport has measured itself this way since 1893 — set by the same man, in the same year, who went on to invent the Tour.
This is the home for all of it. The Hour Record, and the riders who couldn't leave it alone. The time trial — the race of truth, where there's nowhere to hide and the clock doesn't lie. And the strangest chapter of the lot: a sport that drills holes in bottle cages to save grams, now strapping a small fortune to the wrist.
Cycling and time. It's the oldest obsession we've got.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Hour Record in cycling? The Hour Record is the furthest distance a rider can cover in exactly one hour on a velodrome, from a standing start, with no drafting and no pacing — just a rider, a track, and the clock. It's regarded as cycling's purest test of sustained power and aerodynamics. As of 2026 the men's record stands at 56.792 km (Filippo Ganna, 2022) and the women's at 49.254 km (Ellen van Dijk, 2022). Read Dan Bigham on what amateurs can actually learn from chasing the clock.
Why is the time trial called the "race of truth"? The individual time trial is nicknamed the "race of truth" because there's nowhere to hide — no teammates to shelter behind, no wheels to sit on, no tactics to mask a bad day. It's one rider alone against the clock, so the time you post is the exact measure of your form. The French name for the discipline, contre la montre, means literally "against the watch." See our guide to riding a faster time trial.
What watch does Tadej Pogačar wear? Tadej Pogačar wears Richard Mille, the ultra-high-end Swiss watchmaker he became an ambassador for in 2022. He races in one of their ultra-light models — built from materials like carbon and titanium so it weighs only tens of grams — even during Grand Tours. The watches can cost several hundred thousand euros, which is exactly why the partnership turns heads in a sport that agonises over every gram.
Why do pro cyclists wear watches when the sport obsesses over weight? Mostly sponsorship. Luxury watchmakers pay riders and teams handsomely, and a watch visible on the wrist through three weeks of a Grand Tour is worth far more than the grams it costs. It also helps that modern high-end sports watches are engineered to be extraordinarily light — often under 40 grams — so the real weight penalty a rider carries is close to nothing.
What was the Festina affair? The Festina affair was the doping scandal that erupted at the 1998 Tour de France, when a Festina team car was caught at the French–Belgian border carrying a large stash of EPO, growth hormone, and other banned drugs. It triggered police raids, rider arrests, teams abandoning the race, and the near-collapse of that year's Tour — and it became the moment cycling's systematic doping could no longer be denied. Fittingly for a hub about time, Festina was a watch brand: a sponsor whose name ended up attached to one of the sport's darkest chapters.