'I've always been a daredevil' - Cyclist tries to beat 144km/h record ...

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'I've always been a daredevil' - Cyclist tries to beat 144km/h record ... CyclingWeekly

François Pervis has always been transfixed by speed. “Do you know what a casse-cou is?” he asks. “That’s what I am.”

It is what has helped the Frenchman to seven world titles and an Olympic bronze medal as a track sprinter. Translated literally, casse-cou means break-neck, but in English, the term is daredevil.

kilo world record holder says of the location. “No posts, no trees, no fences for cow fields.”

Still, the last time Pervis attempted the speed record, he almost ended up paralysed.

“Last year, I crashed,” he says. “I had an accident.”

The Frenchman was travelling at 130km/h in September 2022 when a slow puncture derailed his effort. “I was like a spinning top. I spun round and round, then the bike hit the sand at the side of the road and I started doing barrel rolls,” he says.

“The little roof of the bike came off and I started to get ejected. That's when my head hit the ground.”

Pervis suffered a spinal fracture that left him millimetres away from never walking again. The experience initially made him "a little bit" scared, he says, but he built his confidence back up, dedicated himself to a season of road riding, and returned to the Nevada desert with even more determination to break the record.

The conditions this time round, however ...

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