UK track cyclist breaks 200m world record with 3D printed bike

British track cyclist Matthew Richardson achieved his goal of becoming the fastest track cyclist in the world when earlier this month he broke the nine-second barrier in the UCI Men’s Elite 200-meter Flying Start. Richardson realized the impressive, world-record-breaking feat on a custom track bike featuring a number of metal 3D printed components.

In elite cycling, equipment is key to enhancing the rider’s performance and can be the difference between a race lost and world record broken. We saw already at the Paris 2024 Olympics, how Team Great Britain won gold in a women’s team sprint track cycling event with the support of aerodynamically optimized 3D printed bicycles. Now, 26-year-old Matthew Richardson has broken another record, completing the 200-meter Flying Start in just 8.857 seconds (breaking his previous world record of 8.941 set just 24 hours earlier). In both cases, the bikes used featured 3D printed parts made by UK-based Renishaw.

Richardson’s record-breaking ride is a custom Hope HB.T track bike fitted with 3D printed metal handlebars, track cranks and a twin seat post, all of which were customized to his needs and optimized for stiffness and aerodynamics. Notably, Renishaw leveraged AM’s design freedom to create components with complex geometries that unlocked strength-to-weight ratios impossible to achieve using conventional manufacturing processes. Again, in a sport where a fraction of a second can make a huge difference, being able to shave as much weight off and fine-tune aerodynamics to the exact specifications of the rider can give athlete’s the edge they need to win.

“Elite sport is one of the toughest proving grounds for any technology,” commented Ben Collins, Lead Applications Engineer at Renishaw. “The demands placed on these bikes, from aerodynamic precision to structural integrity, are extraordinary. To see our additive manufacturing technology contribute to Matt’s historic sub-nine-second ride is a proud moment for everyone at Renishaw.”

At the race, which took place on August 14, 2025 at the Konya Velodrome in Turkiye, Richardson beat the previous world record of 9.088 (held up until recently by Dutch cyclist Harrie Lavreysen), achieving peak performance at over 50 miles per hour (80.5 km/h). On his achievement, Richardson said: “I did it, I came here to do that [go sub-9 seconds] and that’s what I did so, it’s a pretty cool feeling to accomplish the one thing that I came out here to do. A bit of relief there. It was a lot faster [than I’ve previously ridden], I was basically just a passenger. I gave the bike a bit of direction and it was just steering itself almost. I rode of lot of it outside the sprint lane, so I know there’s a bit more there.”

Richardson wasn’t the only track cyclist at the event with a custom 3D printed bike: Renishaw also assisted in the construction of British Cycling riders Will Bjergfelt’s and Charlie Tanfield’s bikes. Will Bjergfelt, for his part, broke the Men’s C5 UCI Hour Record, cycling 51.471 km in just one hour, while Tanfield unfortunately fell just short of breaking the Hour Record set by Filippo Ganna in 2022.

3D printed bike components are increasingly being used by elite athletes to gain a competitive edge and improve performance, efficiency and comfort. In the 2025 Tour de France, for instance, seven out of the ten finishers rode bikes fitted with 3D printed saddles made by Carbon (this includes the winner Tadej Pogačar). These saddles were customized to each rider using pressure-mapping data, which informed the structure of the saddle’s lattice density for optimal support and cushioning.