Cyclist smashes his Eiffel Tower record

A FRENCHMAN has smashed his own record for cycling up the 747 steps of Paris’s famed Eiffel tower, after the 11 September terrorist attacks crushed his dream of pedalling to the roof of the World Trade Centre.

Crowds of tourists watched as 30-year-old Hugues Richard powered his bicycle up the landmark’s steps to the second floor of the tower in just 19 minutes, almost half the time he needed for the 36-minute record he had set on his previous attempt in 1998.

"I was pretty tired when I got to the top," Mr Richard told reporters yesterday, a day after climbing the tower’s graceful metal frame.

Mr Richard said he had been planning to cycle up the steps of one of New York’s Twin Towers before hijacked planes felled the skyscrapers on 11 September.

However, he still intends to take on a US landmark.

"I was talking with the World Trade Centre about possibly doing the Twin Towers," he said.

"After 11 September, I settled on the Statue of Liberty."

Mr Richard has already cycled up the 1,600 steps to the Sacr Coeur church, at the peak of the hill in Paris’s historic Montmartre district, as well as the 284 steps to the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs Elyses.