Maas van Beek broke the hour record behind a derny on Monday in Moscow. The Dutchman reached 66.443 kilometers behind pacemaker Wilco van der Hoorn. The previous record holder was Matthé Pronk with 66.017 kilometers.
Van Beek was pushing an enormous gear of 70x13 during the hour, according to De Telegraaf. He started out with an average of 67km/h and reached the 50-kilometer mark with an average of 66.717 km/h.
But in the final he paid for his start and lost his momentum a bit. Thanks to the encouragement of his coach Klaas Balk, 54-year-old Van Beek managed to concentrate and pull off the record.
A UCI official was in attendance and the required doping control was conducted, so this record will make it to the books.