An audience of nearly two million saw sports engineers from Sheffield Hallam University help celebrity biker Guy Martin smash a world record on a sled they helped design.
Expertise provided by Sheffield Hallam’s Centre for Sports Engineering Research (CSER) helped Guy shatter Rolf Allerdissen’s Guinness World Record for fastest gravity powered sled by more than 30kph, setting a new speed of 134.368 kph (83.49 mph)
The team from Sheffield Hallam, recommended to the production crew after its work with Winter Olympics gold medallist Amy Williams, travelled to the Pyrenees in Andorra as part of filming for Speed With Guy Martin, which was shown on Channel 4.
Professor Steve Haake and colleagues John Hart, Terry Senior and Nick Hamilton designed a prototype for the sled at the University and carried out a series of tests in their attempt to help Guy smash Rolf Allerdissen’s 100kph record set in 2010.
A carbon fibre body was then built by Derbyshire-based carbon fibre and composite engineering specialists EPM Technology and the sled was then constructed by the Sheffield team.
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