After a strong start and a fast opening lap, Alex Dowsett's attempt to recapture the world time record ultimately fell short of the 55.089 km benchmark set by Victor Campanaerts in 2019 and the British record held by Dan Bigam at 54.723 km. It did not reach.

Dr. Xavier Disley, aerodynamics expert and founder of Aerocoach, the company that supplied Dowsett's aerobars and golden chainrings, posted a scatterplot and brief analysis of Dowsett's progress through the 218-lap ride on Twitter, and highlighting the clear points at which the record began to slip away.

Prior to this challenge, Dowsett explained that he would only match Campanaz's pace: "I will ride according to Victor's schedule, i.e., the lap times needed to break Victor's hour record.

"And last time I didn't let go of the chain until 5 minutes to go, but this time I did one run, so I know that if I'm in a good spot, I can pick up the pace from the last 20 minutes."

Had he maintained this pace for the full hour, the record would have been set almost halfway around the Aquascalientes Velodrome.

However, after 150 laps, one could see Dowsett's average pace slowing and his lap times increasing; a clear downward trend could be seen between laps 140 and 160, after which Dowsett began to fight back. Lap times then hovered between 53 and 54 km/h, with average speeds below Campanaz's.

Dowsett's run was uploaded to Strava, but unfortunately there was no data attached for us to dig into. The obvious guess is that Dowsett's power dropped off at this point, which could have resulted in poor position control and an aerodynamic penalty.

With 20 laps to go, Dowsett gathered power toward the end of the race and again surpassed Campanaz's record on the last lap. However, Dowsett's hopes for the record were ended.

With a final distance of 54.555 km, Dowsett broke the record of 52.937 km, but finished third on the leaderboard in distance covered in one hour.

The official UCI leaderboard has Dowsett in second place, but this is strictly unverified because Bigham's second place is not on the UCI's anti-doping system, the Registered Testing Subjects System, and athletes must provide their whereabouts information and complete the biological passport and program because it must be established.

Despite the failure, Dowsett remained upbeat after the challenge, stating that his biggest failure was not trying.

He achieved his goal of raising awareness of the Hemophilia Society, raising over £35,000.

Click here to visit Dowsett's Just Giving page.