Obree bike sells for £10,000

One of the bikes that Graeme Obree used in his world hour record bid in 1993 sold on eBay yesterday for £10,000.

The bike is a copy of Obree’s self-built Old Faithful. He attempted to beat the record on this bike in Hamer, Norway, but missed the mark. With the track booked for 24 hours, he returned the following morning to claim the record on Old Faithful, racking up 51.596km, beating the existing record of Francesco Moser by 445 metres.

The bike was sold by Vic Haines, Obree’s manager from that time.

"I had modifications done at [Mike] Burrows, but he did not make it," Vic Haines told us last week. "I own the bike because I paid for it and a lot of other stuff to get Graeme Obree accepted as more than a circus act."

The original Old Faithful is displayed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Obree rode both his world hour records in his ski-tuck position, with his chest horizontal and positioned very close to the bars and his upper arms against his sides.

Bids in the last two minutes of the online auction took the price from £5,202 up to £10,000.