Today marks the 30th anniversary of Chris Boardman’s win in the 4,000m individual pursuit at the Barcelona 92 Olympics, and here is the revolutionary Lotus Type 108 that he rode to victory.
Richard Hill is now in his fourth decade with Lotus. Today he’s the chief aerodynamicist and every project – whether it’s two wheels or four – passes his desk. He was ever-present in the development of the Type 108 and Boardman’s historic achievement. The original idea for a monocoque design, allowed under the revised track cycling rules, came from independent Norfolk bike builder Mike Burrows.
“There is nothing more un-aerodynamic than spheres and cylinders – which is essentially what the human body is – riding a tubular triangulated bike frame design. And then suddenly the regulations were allowing us to create nice aero-formed profile frames,” said Hill. “We had done a lot of wind tunnel testing, track work and computer simulations, all looking at modelling drag and mapping out the speeds around the velodrome. It was a bike designed around one man, for one race, on one track.
Over the course of the heats and final, Boardman set new standards for the sport. In the final, he caught and overtook German rider Jens Lehmann before the end of the race.
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