{"id":944362,"date":"2026-10-24T10:02:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T10:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/944362\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T10:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T10:02:28","slug":"youve-got-to-challenge-yourself-95-year-old-smashes-cycling-hour-record-on-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/944362\/","title":{"rendered":"‘You’ve got to challenge yourself’ \u2013 95-year-old smashes cycling Hour Record on birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hour Record<\/a> in his 95-99 age category.<\/p>\n

The Dutchman, who has lived most of his life in New Zealand, completed more than 91 laps of his home velodrome in Invercargill on Wednesday for a distance of 22.948km. He beat the previous benchmark \u2013 20.151km, set by New Zealander Reg Rye in 2019 \u2013 by almost 3km.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI was expecting to do a little bit more,\u201d Grandiek told Cycling Weekly. \u201cSomething went wrong with my seat, because I was sitting far too far forward. I thought I was going to slip off. It\u2019s never happened before, but these things happen sometimes.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat helped me was that they put the lap recorder on, so I could see how many laps I was getting. The previous record, the guy rode 80 laps. I probably gave a sigh of relief when I got to the 80 laps and still had about 10 minutes to go. That was pretty good. You just concentrate on going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grandiek once held the 80-84 record 11 years ago, but was bettered three weeks later by then 81-year-old Briton Walter Fowler<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Asked what motivated him to attempt the Hour Record again in his mid-90s, he said he simply \u201cthought it might be something I might be capable of\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m twice a week at the velodrome, and I don\u2019t always really push myself. But I seemed to be quite comfortable being able to do over 20[kph], so I thought, \u2018Well, why not have a go?\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI talk to people who are probably 40 years younger than me, and they think they\u2019re old, and they say, \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t do this. I can\u2019t do that.\u2019 It\u2019s a matter sometimes of mind over matter. You\u2019ve got to challenge yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order for his record to be official with the UCI<\/a>, Grandiek had to undergo anti-doping<\/a> testing following his effort. He said he drank three large bottles of water \u201cto help things come along\u201d, but found his celebrations thwarted as the process drew on longer than the record itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got into the doping control room, and it took ages,\u201d he laughed. \u201cThey\u2019ve got to have a certain volume [of urine], and it took hours. We finished [the record] just after 7pm, and I didn\u2019t get home until quarter past 10.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Born and raised in a province north of Amsterdam, Grandiek emigrated to New Zealand on a six-week passenger ship in the early 1950s, when he was 22. He worked on the railways in the South Island, before becoming a house painter and later ran a deer farm.<\/p>\n

It was only in 2007, then in his mid-70s, that he took up cycling. \u201cThat\u2019s after I finished all my sporting activities, because I played rugby, I was running, ran some half marathons, and that got too hard on the bones,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When he was 78, he had a sudden heart attack, and had to have triple bypass surgery. Almost two decades on, he says, he continues to do \u201ccontrary things to what the cardiologist would tell you \u2013 I\u2019ve basically always ignored their advice and did what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in that vein that Grandiek plans to keep challenging himself on the bike. Typically he has spent his birthday doing charity rides; his Hour Record was in support of a local hospice, Hospice South.<\/p>\n

The benchmark in the next age category, 100-104, is 26.925km, held since 2014 by Frenchman Robert Marchand. Might Grandiek now target that? \u201cYou can only do these things if you\u2019re capable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that as you get older, you slow down. I\u2019ve lost speed compared to 10 years ago. You can\u2019t help that. It\u2019s a natural thing,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I got off the bike on Wednesday night, people said, \u2018What are you going to do next year?\u2019 and I said, \u2018I\u2019ll come up with something.\u2019 I\u2019ve done it for the last 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grandiek’s 95-99 Hour Record is still subject to ratification by the UCI.<\/p>\n

Donations can be made directly to Hospice South via the charity’s website<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Peter Grandiek toasted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-944362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}