The College Student Who Did a Wheelie—for 93 Miles
France’s Oscar Delaite lifts the front tire and smashes the record for being the coolest cyclist alive
His name is Oscar Delaite, and he is a 19-year-old engineering student at the Université de Technologié de Troyes in Troyes, France, and it is the belief of this column that he will go on to live a long, happy life of many great accomplishments.
He has performed a bicycle wheelie longer and farther than anyone ever on planet Earth:
For six and a half hours. And 93 miles.
Specifically, 150.4 kilometers (or 93.45 miles) over six hours and 31 minutes, completed in late September. The mark—“Greatest Distance Covered While Performing a Continuous Bicycle Wheelie”—is confirmed and in the books. Guinness World Records sent Oscar the congratulatory email on Monday.
Please don’t ask me why you’re reading about this on the sports page. You and I both know that riding a 93-mile, six and a half hour wheelie is a rather absurd, but also spectacular athletic feat, as anyone who ever wrestled with a banana seat or BMX bicycle can attest.
Popping a bike wheelie may be a rite of childhood, but not everyone is successful, and no one has ever been as successful as Oscar Delaite.
Think about it: In human history, 12 people have walked on the moon. Just 230 have won the Nobel Prize in Physics (Smarty-pants John Bardeen of the University of Wisconsin won it twice.) Only one person has done a single wheelie for six and a half hours.
It is an outrageous amount of time. In six and a half hours, Oscar could have watched “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” back to back. He could have flown from Paris to Cairo and had time left over to run a half marathon. He could have slow cooked the best barbecue you’ve ever had in your life and then spent the next six and a half hours telling you exactly how he did it.
Instead Oscar summoned a small crowd to a 200-meter indoor track in the spa town of Vittel, where he rode 752 unbroken laps, shattering the previous record by 70 kilometers (43.4 miles) before finally collapsing to the ground, exhausted and very sore in one specific area.
I tracked Oscar down because I needed to know: Why?
“Because it’s fun,” Oscar said.
Zut alors. I kicked myself. What a stupid question! Of course doing a wheelie is fun. It was fun when I tried it in the parking lot of my elementary school on my Columbia Silver Fox and it remains just as fun today. Our modern world is cold and mad but lifting a front tire and doing a wheelie is one of the few things that makes everyone happy, like sitting next to an empty middle seat, or a canceled office meeting.
(Plus, it’s cool. It’s fine to be the fastest bike rider or the best climber, but I bet the first cyclist you emulated was the kid who could do a rad wheelie.)
Delaite owned a couple of previous world records: longest one-handed wheelie (set in 2024) and longest continuous wheelie without the front wheel (100.5 km, set in 2023) which is apparently a bit easier because you’re not lifting as much weight.
For his latest and most high-profile mark, Oscar trained for more than a year, 10 to 15 hours a week. His record-breaking set up was quite typical: a Rose commuter bike with a flat bar and slick, 50 millimeter width tires, standard pressure. The only modification was adjusting the seat so Oscar could sit as he attempted the record.
Delaite wore a helmet, a camera strapped to his chest, and a water supply draped around his back. He did not wear fancy cycling shoes—he wore Nike basketball high-tops. Over the six and a half hours, he averaged a speed of 14 miles an hour, which is rather remarkable.
I asked him what he thought about during the attempt. Could he daydream? Could he zone out and listen to the entire Dylan catalog? Terrible podcasts?
“I had to be focused,” he said. “I checked the times, the number of laps. The last hours are really, really intense. If I make a mistake, I can’t restart at 100 kilometers.”
Mentally, Oscar remained calm. Physically, he encountered few problems. His arms and hands did fine. His legs held up, too.
“The main pain was in my ass,” he said.
Excuse me. Did Oscar mean, like, his behind, his gluteus?
“Yes,” he said. “All of my weight was in the saddle…it was painful for a week.”
Oscar felt much better now. He was starting to think about new records. Possibly a wheelie version of “Everesting”—the climbing challenge in which cyclists do hill repeats to replicate the 29,029 foot ascent of Mt. Everest.
“I have some ideas,” he said.
He was proud of his new mark and eager to spread the word. He spoke about wanting to grow this very specific athletic discipline in France and around the world. It was like he said: wheelies were a lot of fun.
Of course they’re fun. But only Oscar Delaite knows exactly how much.
Write to Jason Gay at Jaso...@wsj.com
