From July 16 to the 24th George and I were official observers at a record attempt session by the Varna team outside of Montreal. The venue was a huge auto test track (approx. a 4 mile oval). The track had not been repaved in many years and was very bumpy in sections, otherwise I believe the speeds would have been even greater. After the first week, John Tetz drove up to be an observer, along with Pierre Laliberte of Quebec, who was the main person who secured the site for the team and who was an observer the entire time.
During the two weeks a total of 7 records were broken by the two Varna bikes and riders, Sam Wittingham (200 m, 500 m, kilometer, mile and hour) and Paul Buttemer (10 k and 100 k). Four were better than the high and low altitude records, three were new low altitude records. One record, the 4000 meter, was broken by Robert Lafleur. He broke both the previous high and low altitude records.
NOTE: THE RECORDS BELOW ARE TENTATIVE; They have not yet been submitted for approval. All wind and back-up run criteria were met for each record. The times and kilometers listed below are official; the miles per hour calculations are rough (I made the miles per hour calculations tonight and could be off some.)
200 meters:
Old Low Altitude record = 95.11 kpm
New Low altitude record: 100.06 kph (62.17 mph)
Sam Wittingham, Varna Mephisto
500 meters
Old High altitude record = 97.29 kpm; old low altitude: = 91.63 kph
New record (set at low altitude) = 99.17 kpm (61.63 mph)
Sam Wittingham, Varna Mephisto
Kilometer
Old Low Altitude record = 95.11 kpm (high altitude record is 97.14 kpm)
New Low altitude record: 96.44 kph (59.928 mph)
Sam Wittingham, Varna Mephisto
Mile
Old Low Altitude record = 87.08 kpm (high altitude record is 95.34 kpm)
New Low altitude record: 95.02 kph (59.06 mph)
Sam Wittingham, Varna Mephisto
4000 meters:
Old High altitude record = 3 min, 34.33 sec.; Old low altitude: = 3 min
43.79 secs
New record (set at low altitude) = 3 minutes 29.559 sec. (42.73 mph)
Robert Lafleur, Lafleur 4
One Hour
Old Record: 78.04 km
New Record: 79.136 km (49.17 miles)
Sam Wittingham, Varna Mephisto
10 km:
Old Record: 8 minutes 42.95 seconds
New Record (set at low altitude record) 7 minutes 53.02 seconds (47.2 mph)
Paul Buttemer, Varna Orphesus
100km:
Old Record: 1 hour, 24 minutes 1 second.
New Record (set at low altitude) One hour 19 minutes 4.74 seconds (47.2
mph)
Paul Buttemer, Varna Orphesus