When Chris Hoy first joined the Great Britain cycling team almost a decade
ago, he had to bring his own bike to the track and sign for his tracksuit
top. Team regulation issue was two wheels and two skinsuits, for the season.
The support staff were volunteers and the cyclists second-class citizens.
“I can remember those tracksuits,” says Hoy. “They smelt as if they were 10
years old. We were the least professional team on the block. We had no
respect from other teams, we were just cannon fodder.”
Twelve years on from Atlanta, the nadir for the whole British Olympic team,
and the GB cycling squad head for Beijing as one of the strongest in the
Olympics. Having won seven world championship gold medals last year, and
nine more this year, the team now emits exactly the aura of invincibility
Hoy sensed in his rivals a sepia-tinted era ago. “Now, you pull on your GB
jersey and you know you’ve earned your place and so does every one of your
competitors,” he says.
To trace the change in the ethos and discipline of the team would require a
microscope, so many threads are woven into the tapestry. First, there was
Peter Keen, the first performance director, who fought long and hard for
right of way in the committee rooms of UK Sport. His protege, Chris
Boardman, had already shown what could be done with a meticulous mind and a
rigid work ethic, but it was Keen, now head of performance at UK Sport, who
laid down the template for cycling’s success.
He was tough and unsentimental, happiest in a white coat and carrying a
clipboard, but he was also a visionary, one of the first in cycling to
question the old ways. In Boardman, he found the ideal travelling companion.
The opening night of the Sydney Games was the point of gravity release for
British cycling. In Jason Queally, a 30-year-old former lab technician,
Britain found a new hero, not just an unlikely gold medallist in the kilo
but a talisman for the whole British team. In just over a minute in the Dunc
Gray Velodrome, Queally equalled the total gold medal haul from Atlanta,
forcing athletes inside and outside the cycling squad to look at themselves
anew. Maybe they, too, were potential gold medallists.
“I was there and it opened my eyes to what was possible,” Hoy says. “No longer
was an Olympic champion untouchable or godlike, he was a normal guy, someone
I’d trained with every day.” Queally did not make the squad this time, but
Hoy, his successor as the Olympic kilo champion, has been the perfect heir.
If there is a spiritual leader of the cycling team it is not the laid-back
Bradley Wiggins but the dynamic and headstrong Scotsman. Hoy is still fuming
over the decision of the Olympic organisers to banish the kilo in favour of
a BMX event (even though Britain’s Shanaze Reade is an overwhelming
favourite to win the women’s title).
As the reigning Olympic champion he has taken it personally, while performing
the difficult trick of turning himself from a pure kilo rider - four laps of
the track flat out - into a world champion sprinter. The kilo, he says, is
pure sport, just man, bike and clock, the perfect discipline for a former
maths student. The sprint is more tactical, more of a lottery, as much art
as science.
“It’s just a leap of mentality,” he explains. “Physically, if you have the
ability to be a good kilo rider, you also have got the ability to be a good
sprinter or a good Keirin rider. It’s just the tactical side of things and
the repeated effort. The kilo is four years built into one moment and the
goalposts are moving all the time [in terms of the time you need to win] but
I got quite good at coping with it.”
“Quite good” is typical Hoy understatement. In Athens, Hoy, the last cyclist
to take to the track, looked on as, one by one, three riders - Shane Kelly,
Stefan Nimke and Arnaud Tournant – demolished the Olympic record. Tournant,
last but one to go and an old rival of Hoy’s, then produced the first
sub-61sec ride at sea level. Hoy bettered it by 0.185sec to become the
Olympic champion.
In his excellent book on Britain’s track cycling revolution - Heroes, Villains
and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britain’s Track Cycling Revolution - Richard
Moore shifts the attention from Hoy’s muted celebrations to Steve Peters,
the team’s psychiatrist, sitting in the stands. “He [Chris] was ‘locked
in’,” Peters recalls in the book. “When he finished he was still so focused
that he’d almost forgotten where he was. For me that was perfection.”
Hoy adds: “We didn’t think anyone could go under 61 seconds. We were on the
edge of what was possible, but we had prepared for the worst and it was
that: the world record being broken just before you ride. Nothing will ever
compare to the pressure on me that night.”
Unusually for a top athlete, Hoy still writes his own training programme. He
reasons that he is now 32 and knows his body better than anybody, but it is
a tribute to the spirit of trust fostered by Dave Brailsford, the team
manager, that riders should be allowed to decide their own workloads.
The latest proof of Hoy’s versatility came at the world championships in
Manchester when he blitzed Theo “The Boss” Bos, the acknowledged master of
the sprint, so completely that the big Dutchman fell to pieces the next day
in the Keirin.
With Bos as a prize scalp, Hoy will go to Beijing as the favourite to take the
gold in the sprint and the Keirin, an unforeseeable position in the
aftermath of Athens. In the sprint, the art is in the pacing through the
early rounds and the ability to switch off and on.
“You’ve got to get yourself up and down 10 times,” Hoy explains. “The
important rides come later in the semi-finals and the final, but if you lose
concentration early doors you won’t be there for the final.
“I always thought that the sprinters had it easy: you just rock up, do a quick
sprint. But it’s not like that. You’re continually warming up, warming down,
analysing your race and thinking how to exploit the weakness of the
opposition. It’s exhausting and you have to do it five days in a row. I know
I can do it physically, but the mental side is the hard part.”
That is the job of Jan van Eijden, who has proved to be another inspired
addition to the coaching team. The former German sprint world champion is
the same age as Hoy and raced against him, but his tactical acumen has
quickly been harnessed to the cause of the British team. Van Eijden made the
most of his talent, disguising his lack of natural speed through his quick
wit on the track. But he had never coached before.
“In sprint, you can’t just work with power and strength,” he explains. “You
have to know when to use it. You have to match your strengths against your
opponent’s weaknesses.”
Hoy’s naivete was cruelly exposed b y B o s i n t h e s p r i n t w o r l d
championships in 2005. The Scotsman left his sprint too late and was caught
out by the Dutchman, who accelerated from the front. However, Van Eijden has
taught Hoy to wind up his sprint a fraction earlier to use his power over a
longer period. In doing so, he has changed the tactical boundaries of both
the sprint and the motorbike-paced Keirin, turning the cat and mouse of the
latter into a straight two-lap burn-up.
“I didn’t really know what to expect when I first came here,” says the German.
“But Chris is such an easy rider to work with. After all he’s achieved, he
could be a bit cocky, but he’s very open-minded, he wants the information.”
Van Eijden’s view of the British track team has the benefit of objectivity. He
knew the team was well organised, but not until he became part of it did he
realise just how well organised. “The team is unbelievably professional,” he
says. “You know us Germans, we love efficiency, but here it’s all done and I
love it.”
Heroes, Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britain’s Track Cycling
Revolution, by Richard Moore, Harper-Sport, £15.99.
The Britons on track for cycling gold
Cycling may be the sport where Britain stands to win the most golds. Chris Hoy
is strongly fancied in the team and individual sprints as well as in the
Keirin discipline. In addition to the Scot, at least four other cyclists are
tipped to get the better of their rivals when the competition begins on
Saturday . . .
BRADLEY WIGGINS
Won gold, silver and bronze medals at the Athens Olympics in 2004, after
picking up bronze in Sydney four years earlier. Wiggins took part in the
2006 and 2007 Tour de France races. He won the individual and team pursuit
titles and the Madison at this year’s indoor world championships in
Manchester, and will be racing in the same events in Beijing
First race: individual pursuit, Friday, August 15
VICTORIA PENDLETON
Endured a poor first Olympics in Athens last time around, when she could
finish only sixth and ninth in the time trial and 200m sprint respectively.
But the 2007 Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year is now considered the
cycling team’s best hope of gold this month after stealing the show at the
world championships in March, when she won the individual and team sprints.
Could be in the running for BBC Sports Personality of the Year if she lives
up to her billing on the track in Beijing
First race: women’s sprint, Sunday, August 17
MARK CAVENDISH
Became the only British cyclist to win four stages in one Tour de France when
he dominated the sprint stages in this year’s race. The Isle of Man rider
then pulled out after 14 stages to concentrate on the Olympics. Cavendish
will partner Bradley Wiggins in the Madison, an event in which they are
world champions, and he still has a chance to compete in the 4,000m
individual pursuit
First race: men’s Madison, Tuesday, August 19
NICOLE COOKE
In action on the second day of the Games and could pick up the first cycling
medal in the women’s road race. After finishing fifth in the women’s road
race and 19th in the time trial in Athens in 2004, Cooke’s take-off year was
2006: she won the World Cup road race and the Grande Boucle Féminin, the
women’s equivalent of the Tour de France, and became the first British
cyclist to top the UCI world rankings. Injury kept her out of the World Cup
race in 2007 but she has already won a stage of the Tour de l’Aude this year
First race: women’s road race, Sunday, August 10
