September 16, 2025 • 9 mins
Join us on Daily Sports History as we dive into Denise Mueller-Korenek's incredible feat of setting the bicycle speed record at 183.9 mph in 2018. Learn about the preparation, the intense ride behind a dragster, and how she shattered the limits of speed cycling, becoming a trailblazer in the sport. Discover the story behind her historic achievement.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On September sixteenth, twenty eighteen, American cyclist Denise Mueller Kranetic
does something no one has ever done before. She rides
a bicycle over one hundred and eighty miles an hour,
setting the world record for the fastest paced bike ride
(00:22):
ever at a speed that many of us have never
even driven in a car. And today we're going to
dive into how all this happened on Daily Sports History.
Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese. I'm going
to help guide you through the history of sports so
(00:43):
that you can increase your sports knowledge. And today's trivia
question is what kind of car was used to help
set the motorized paced speed record. Now, Denise was born
into a life of being very active. Her father, Myron,
was an ultra distance cycler and at the age of
(01:05):
seventy he actually rode the entire perimeter of the continental
United States, a distance of over twelve thousand miles and
he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for
this attempt. And her mother would race demolition derby cars.
So her family was a unique family which led her
(01:25):
on her path where she would compete as a junior
cyclist and her teens, and she would finish in the
top three in the nation and compete at world competitions
where she won the national championship in the road track
and mountain biking fifteen times. And in nineteen ninety two,
at just the age of nineteen, she retired from cycling
and she went on to work for her family security
(01:46):
company and eventually became the president and CEO of that company.
But she always had that ditch, and in two thousand
and nine she actually came back to cycling and while
training for marathons and the Ironman triathlon, where she would
actually be trained by John Howard, who set the record
in nineteen eighty five for the fastest paced bicycle speed
(02:09):
at one hundred and fifty two point two miles an hour. Now,
what do we mean by motorpace time? That means you're
not doing it completely on your own. You are pedaling
on your own, You're not having anyone pull you, but
you're having a vehicle in front of you that is
limiting the wood resistance, so you are essentially drafting behind
(02:30):
this vehicle allowing you to reach these incredible speeds. And
his record would stand until nineteen ninety five when Fred
Rothenberg would set the record with one hundred and sixty
seven miles an hour, doing it behind a modified drag
race car, and Fred would actually go on to help
(02:50):
train her for her world record attempt as well. So
with two bicycle speeders in her corner, she decided to
go for the speed record as well. Actually when her trainer,
John Howard told her that no women had even attempted
to set the speed record, and she began seriously training
in twenty twelve and along the way she actually won
two national titles for her age group, and in twenty
(03:12):
sixteen she made her first attempt at the Boonville Salt Flats. Now,
if you've ever seen a land speed record done by
cars or anything, they always do it on these flats,
in these deserts. It's a flat surface. Yes, it's dirt,
but a long flat surface with nothing in the way,
nothing blocking you, and it's a solid surface. Been a
place where people try to set, where people try to
(03:34):
speed as fast as they can all the time. And
in this attempt she actually goes for one hundred and
forty seven point seven miles an hour, establishing the women's
world record behind a range drover, a large suv to
help pace her so she could get to that speed,
and she used a custom bike as well, which has
a unique gear system, which is a two gear system
(03:57):
which one pedal allows over one hundred feet of distance,
so your one pedal is about three to four times
faster than on a regular bike, which allows you to
get more speed and without the distance, you can do
even more. But in twenty eighteen, she wanted to be
the one to set the record for the whole entire world,
(04:19):
and she continued to train and then she got in
contact with Fred and he allowed her to use the
drag race car he used for his attempt, which was
one of the drag race cars which is very skinny
at the front with the front two wheels being very small,
and then the engine in the back. Now this was
a modified one and in the back it looks like
a place where you're gonna go vote a little enclave
(04:40):
to keep the wind resistance off of her completely and
a place for her to tether herself to keep her
syfe a little bit. Now she's not with this tether.
It's completely just a safety issue, and there's a bar
across the back to kind of keep her so she
knows like where the distance to be at. Now, the
challenge with this is she actually has to have a
driver keep distance. If the driver goes too fast and
(05:01):
she can't keep up, she won't be able to draft
as much. If she goes too slow, she's going to
run into her. So it's a constant battle, and she
had a race car Drivershia Holbrook actually help her. Now.
She had been racing multiple different kinds of times of cars.
She's raised stock cars, Formula Formula cars, and drag racing cars,
so she had a wide variety of skills in her racing.
(05:23):
But what she also had was a connection with Denise.
They met and they instantly connected, and that connection was
what really helped him break this record because without that
connection and that teamwork, they would not be able to
work together to get to the speed they needed to get.
And so the day came on September sixteenth, twenty eighteen.
(05:44):
Everyone was there, the niece's team was there to make
their attempt, and there were some challenges as they had
just gotten Fred's car and it hadn't been used since
nineteen ninety five when Fredda used it, so they had
to change the tires, tune up the engine, get everything ready,
test it so that would be safe, and get it
ready for the event. So it was a lot of
leg up to it that didn't involve actually Denise riding
(06:07):
her bike. Now, her bike was also customized as well.
It's about seven feet long and it had seventeen inch
wheels on it that were actually motorcycle wheels the size
of the front wheel of a motorcycle instead of the
back wheel. But this will allow her to have more
grip and be able to reach these speeds as a
regular bicycle tire cannot reach these speeds. Now, they came
(06:27):
into this just to break the record. They weren't supposed
to go more than one hundred and seventy five miles
an hour, and that was more than enough to break
the record. But as they're going, and you're just going
for how fast you can go, you just keep gaining
speed and gaining speed and gaining speed. So they continue
to speed up and speed up slowly and slowly, slowly.
And I'll post a video of this actual event. It's
(06:48):
very weirdnominous to watch because there's a video from you
can see Denise riding and a video outside of it,
and you can just see how close she is to
the car. There's this pole that she's very close, Sue.
That's that's her guide to try to be as close
to that poll as she can without hitting it. And
so her and her driver Shay are working in tandem
(07:09):
to try to keep that connection in that speed in
communication to go faster and she could handle it. They
circle the track three and a half times and within
that final mile they actually break off the toe rope
that she's on and they allow her to pedal to
keep up with it. That's what they need for the record.
If she's not pedaling, it's not an actual record. She's
just being towed behind a car. And so she's actually
(07:31):
starting to pedal when they let go and Denise she's
able to keep up with her and they feel really
good with what they've done. They think they have gotten
the record, and they's surprised when they get back to
their base camp and her team tells her that she
had reached one hundred and eighty three point nine miles
an hour, seventeen miles more than the previous record said
(07:52):
by her friend Fred, and put Denise again in the
record books at a speed so fast that many of
us can't even comp and driving that fast, let alone
riding a bicycle, as the average bicycle can get up
to thirty, maybe forty miles an hour if you're going
down a hill, which is very dangerous, it's a dangerous
(08:12):
thing to do, let alone going over one hundred miles
and then approaching almost two hundred. Now that goes to
show you this record could be broken. It could someone could.
As technology advances in bicycles, it could definitely be broken.
But that doesn't mean it will because it takes because
there are many speed cyclists that wouldn't even attempt something
(08:34):
like this. It takes a lot of courage to do
something like this, and Denise had the backing of some
friends that had done it, and that gave her the
courage to do it on her own, to not only
show that she could do it, but to show others,
especially women out there, that a record, no matter what
it is, can be broken by anyone. I want to
(08:54):
thank you for listening to Today's Daily Sports History. I
hope you like this to me. I can't even fathom
going that fast on a bike. I'm lucky to even
make it down the road. And these are the stories
I'd love to tell you, and if you love these stories,
please leave us a rating and review wherever you're listening,
and if you do that, tell us a story that
you would like us to cover and we'll do that
just for you in leaving your name the topic you
(09:17):
like to cover in the review and come back tomorrow
for more daily sports history and the answer to today's
trivia question what kind of car was used to help
set the motorized Pacete speed record And the answer is
a drag racing car was used in the same drag
(09:38):
racing car was actually used in the top two set
times in the top two by motorized paste bicycle times
On September sixteenth, twenty eighteen, American cyclist Denise Mueller Kranetic
does something no one has ever done before. She rides
a bicycle over one hundred and eighty miles an hour,
setting the world record for the fastest paced bike ride
(00:22):
ever at a speed that many of us have never
even driven in a car. And today we're going to
dive into how all this happened on Daily Sports History.
Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese. I'm going
to help guide you through the history of sports so
(00:43):
that you can increase your sports knowledge. And today's trivia
question is what kind of car was used to help
set the motorized paced speed record. Now, Denise was born
into a life of being very active. Her father, Myron,
was an ultra distance cycler and at the age of
(01:05):
seventy he actually rode the entire perimeter of the continental
United States, a distance of over twelve thousand miles and
he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for
this attempt. And her mother would race demolition derby cars.
So her family was a unique family which led her
(01:25):
on her path where she would compete as a junior
cyclist and her teens, and she would finish in the
top three in the nation and compete at world competitions
where she won the national championship in the road track
and mountain biking fifteen times. And in nineteen ninety two,
at just the age of nineteen, she retired from cycling
and she went on to work for her family security
(01:46):
company and eventually became the president and CEO of that company.
But she always had that ditch, and in two thousand
and nine she actually came back to cycling and while
training for marathons and the Ironman triathlon, where she would
actually be trained by John Howard, who set the record
in nineteen eighty five for the fastest paced bicycle speed
(02:09):
at one hundred and fifty two point two miles an hour. Now,
what do we mean by motorpace time? That means you're
not doing it completely on your own. You are pedaling
on your own, You're not having anyone pull you, but
you're having a vehicle in front of you that is
limiting the wood resistance, so you are essentially drafting behind
(02:30):
this vehicle allowing you to reach these incredible speeds. And
his record would stand until nineteen ninety five when Fred
Rothenberg would set the record with one hundred and sixty
seven miles an hour, doing it behind a modified drag
race car, and Fred would actually go on to help
(02:50):
train her for her world record attempt as well. So
with two bicycle speeders in her corner, she decided to
go for the speed record as well. Actually when her trainer,
John Howard told her that no women had even attempted
to set the speed record, and she began seriously training
in twenty twelve and along the way she actually won
two national titles for her age group, and in twenty
(03:12):
sixteen she made her first attempt at the Boonville Salt Flats. Now,
if you've ever seen a land speed record done by
cars or anything, they always do it on these flats,
in these deserts. It's a flat surface. Yes, it's dirt,
but a long flat surface with nothing in the way,
nothing blocking you, and it's a solid surface. Been a
place where people try to set, where people try to
(03:34):
speed as fast as they can all the time. And
in this attempt she actually goes for one hundred and
forty seven point seven miles an hour, establishing the women's
world record behind a range drover, a large suv to
help pace her so she could get to that speed,
and she used a custom bike as well, which has
a unique gear system, which is a two gear system
(03:57):
which one pedal allows over one hundred feet of distance,
so your one pedal is about three to four times
faster than on a regular bike, which allows you to
get more speed and without the distance, you can do
even more. But in twenty eighteen, she wanted to be
the one to set the record for the whole entire world,
(04:19):
and she continued to train and then she got in
contact with Fred and he allowed her to use the
drag race car he used for his attempt, which was
one of the drag race cars which is very skinny
at the front with the front two wheels being very small,
and then the engine in the back. Now this was
a modified one and in the back it looks like
a place where you're gonna go vote a little enclave
(04:40):
to keep the wind resistance off of her completely and
a place for her to tether herself to keep her
syfe a little bit. Now she's not with this tether.
It's completely just a safety issue, and there's a bar
across the back to kind of keep her so she
knows like where the distance to be at. Now, the
challenge with this is she actually has to have a
driver keep distance. If the driver goes too fast and
(05:01):
she can't keep up, she won't be able to draft
as much. If she goes too slow, she's going to
run into her. So it's a constant battle, and she
had a race car Drivershia Holbrook actually help her. Now.
She had been racing multiple different kinds of times of cars.
She's raised stock cars, Formula Formula cars, and drag racing cars,
so she had a wide variety of skills in her racing.
(05:23):
But what she also had was a connection with Denise.
They met and they instantly connected, and that connection was
what really helped him break this record because without that
connection and that teamwork, they would not be able to
work together to get to the speed they needed to get.
And so the day came on September sixteenth, twenty eighteen.
(05:44):
Everyone was there, the niece's team was there to make
their attempt, and there were some challenges as they had
just gotten Fred's car and it hadn't been used since
nineteen ninety five when Fredda used it, so they had
to change the tires, tune up the engine, get everything ready,
test it so that would be safe, and get it
ready for the event. So it was a lot of
leg up to it that didn't involve actually Denise riding
(06:07):
her bike. Now, her bike was also customized as well.
It's about seven feet long and it had seventeen inch
wheels on it that were actually motorcycle wheels the size
of the front wheel of a motorcycle instead of the
back wheel. But this will allow her to have more
grip and be able to reach these speeds as a
regular bicycle tire cannot reach these speeds. Now, they came
(06:27):
into this just to break the record. They weren't supposed
to go more than one hundred and seventy five miles
an hour, and that was more than enough to break
the record. But as they're going, and you're just going
for how fast you can go, you just keep gaining
speed and gaining speed and gaining speed. So they continue
to speed up and speed up slowly and slowly, slowly.
And I'll post a video of this actual event. It's
(06:48):
very weirdnominous to watch because there's a video from you
can see Denise riding and a video outside of it,
and you can just see how close she is to
the car. There's this pole that she's very close, Sue.
That's that's her guide to try to be as close
to that poll as she can without hitting it. And
so her and her driver Shay are working in tandem
(07:09):
to try to keep that connection in that speed in
communication to go faster and she could handle it. They
circle the track three and a half times and within
that final mile they actually break off the toe rope
that she's on and they allow her to pedal to
keep up with it. That's what they need for the record.
If she's not pedaling, it's not an actual record. She's
just being towed behind a car. And so she's actually
(07:31):
starting to pedal when they let go and Denise she's
able to keep up with her and they feel really
good with what they've done. They think they have gotten
the record, and they's surprised when they get back to
their base camp and her team tells her that she
had reached one hundred and eighty three point nine miles
an hour, seventeen miles more than the previous record said
(07:52):
by her friend Fred, and put Denise again in the
record books at a speed so fast that many of
us can't even comp and driving that fast, let alone
riding a bicycle, as the average bicycle can get up
to thirty, maybe forty miles an hour if you're going
down a hill, which is very dangerous, it's a dangerous
(08:12):
thing to do, let alone going over one hundred miles
and then approaching almost two hundred. Now that goes to
show you this record could be broken. It could someone could.
As technology advances in bicycles, it could definitely be broken.
But that doesn't mean it will because it takes because
there are many speed cyclists that wouldn't even attempt something
(08:34):
like this. It takes a lot of courage to do
something like this, and Denise had the backing of some
friends that had done it, and that gave her the
courage to do it on her own, to not only
show that she could do it, but to show others,
especially women out there, that a record, no matter what
it is, can be broken by anyone. I want to
(08:54):
thank you for listening to Today's Daily Sports History. I
hope you like this to me. I can't even fathom
going that fast on a bike. I'm lucky to even
make it down the road. And these are the stories
I'd love to tell you, and if you love these stories,
please leave us a rating and review wherever you're listening,
and if you do that, tell us a story that
you would like us to cover and we'll do that
just for you in leaving your name the topic you
(09:17):
like to cover in the review and come back tomorrow
for more daily sports history and the answer to today's
trivia question what kind of car was used to help
set the motorized Pacete speed record And the answer is
a drag racing car was used in the same drag
(09:38):
racing car was actually used in the top two set
times in the top two by motorized paste bicycle times
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