When Oskar Svendsen’s friends dragged him to a science lab on his stag do last spring, they were amused to find the perfect set dressing for their escapade: his name was literally on the wall. The Oslo lab’s poster – a list of all the highest VO2 max scores ever recorded – laid it bare. At the top was Svendsen, beside the year 2012, with a number that still hasn’t been surpassed: 97.5ml/kg/min. “The guy who does the tests said, ‘Seriously, is that him?’” Svendsen laughs, recounting the story. Not only was it him, he was back for a retest – punishment for the stag.
For the past 14 years since that record-breaking test, Svendsen has been a mythic character in elite sport. His tale is well-told, but little understood: the teenage cyclist who redefined the limits of human physiology, and then, two years later, vanished altogether.
