18/05/2026
🚨 "She came out of retirement, got towed to 100 mph behind a dragster, then let go - and rode a bicycle to 183.9 mph.
On September 16, 2018, Denise Mueller-Korenek became the fastest human being ever to ride a bicycle, shattering a 23-year-old world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. She averaged 183.932 mph across the final mile of a five-mile course. That's faster than most light aircraft take off.
She was 45 years old at the time. A mother of three. The CEO of a home security company. And she did it on what was only her third run behind the pace car.
The record she broke - 167 mph set by Dutch cyclist Fred Rompelberg in 1995 - had stood longer than some of our road bikes have been manufactured. Mueller-Korenek didn't just beat it. She blew past the entire 170s without touching them.
"We weren't supposed to go more than 175," she said moments after the run, her throat coated in salt dust. "I'm still on cloud nine."
Here's what makes this story even more remarkable: the bike itself was an engineering feat as extreme as the ride. A custom carbon KHS machine with a double-reduction drivetrain producing 529 gear inches - so steep it was physically impossible to pedal from a standing start. She was towed behind a 1,000-horsepower dragster until 100 mph, then released into a narrow pocket of air just inches behind the car. Drift too far left or right and a hurricane-force headwind would have thrown her off the bike at racing car speeds.
She wore eight pounds of leather and Kevlar instead of Lycra. She covered one mile every 38 pedal strokes.
To put that cadence in perspective: at 183 mph, she was spinning at 117 rpm - the same cadence a track sprinter holds for about 15 seconds. She held it for miles.
Mueller-Korenek had already set the women's paced land speed record in 2016 at 147.7 mph. She came back two years later - after a 2017 that included a crash that broke her shoulder blade and a rib - to target the outright record held by men since 1899.
And she did it in the same dragster that Rompelberg used in 1995. He personally encouraged her attempt. She thanked him by beating his record by 17 mph.
There is no cleaner definition of human ambition than a 45-year-old mother strapping herself behind a dragster on a salt flat in Utah and pedaling into territory no human has touched before or since.
The bicycle is still, after 180 years, capable of astonishing us."
Two Wheels.One Passion ™️
