There is something about Chris Hoy that inspires confidence, on and off the track. E d u c a t e d a t S t Andrews University, the Scottish cyclist is now 32 and the holder of three Olympic gold medals and seven World Championship golds. The third Olympic gold came at Laoshan Velodrome on the west side of Beijing yesterday as Hoy won the keirin race with devastating authority.

He accelerated with 300m remaining, a violent explosion of pace that fragmented the field and turned the final into two races: his and the battle for second place. Given the shortness of the time the riders spend racing at top speed in the keirin, about 39 seconds, Hoy’s winning margin was staggeringly wide. He is, by some distance, the best in the world at this discipline.

A very good performance was made better for the GB team when Ross Edgar out-sprinted the Japanese Kiyofumi Nagai to claim the silver medal. Seeing the GB riders finish first and second in a final with six contestants was the most telling testimony yet to the team’s dominance at these Olympics. There were three finals at the track yesterday evening and from them the GB squad took two gold, one silver and two bronze medals.

Hoy was pleased, both for himself and his teammate. “It’s beyond expectations. I think this race is one we’ll remember for a long time. I’m very emotional. It just means everything to me. You don’t think about the podium or the medal, it’s all about the process. And it’s just fantastic that Ross got the silver as well.”

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About 30 Union Jacks were held high and waved around the stadium and perhaps the most striking was the one that proclaimed: “Chris Hoy - The Real McHoy”. He is that and more. Four years ago he was gold medallist in the one-kilo-metre time trial at the Athens Olympics and was renowned for his brilliance in the sport’s fastest time trial.

The world governing body for cycling has dropped that event from the Olympic programme and Hoy was left without his specialist event. He switched to the keirin, a race that would take him away from the safe sport of racing against the clock and into the maelstrom of track sprinting. He had to learn and fast. He did so remarkably well, adapting better than even he expected and in his last 29 keirin races, he has lost just one.

To make the race his, he had to redefine it and perhaps that has been the single greatest feat in track cycling in the past two years. At its simplest, the keirin is a 2000m track race which begins in earnest when the pacing derny peels off the track with 625m to go and allows the riders to take it from there. Traditionally, it involved a brilliant tactical finale because no one wanted to lead until well into the final lap of the two-and-a-half lap burn-up. So there was much jockeying for position and tactical manoeuvring as every rider tried to play his card last. The premium was brilliant bike handling and nerveless decision-making.

With his background in time-trials, Hoy wasn’t going to win such races and could only survive by finding a new way to race the keirin. That is what he has achieved and it is why he is now indisputably the world’s best. His style of keirin racing is to ride directly behind the derny from the start and be in pole position when the pacer pulls off the track. The choice for his rivals is then stark: they can sit in behind and try to out-sprint him off the final bend or they can overtake him immediately and try to hold him off.

Effectively, they have little choice. He is so strong that if they take him early, he will rein them in before surging past. If they wait, they don’t get near him. There is, of course, a danger for Hoy because if he goes full speed too early, he may be vulnerable to a rider who has remained in his slip-stream and takes his chance when fatigue slows the leader.

Yesterday Hoy wanted to control the race without having to commit too early. He and teammate Edgar sat side by side behind the derny for five-and-a-half laps and when the race then began, they tried to maintain a good tempo without going all out. Had they been allowed to continue, it would have been too easy for Hoy but the Japanese Kiyofumi passed the two GB riders and for a moment, there was a question for the Scot to answer.

And it is in moments such as this that Hoy expresses himself. He launched himself in pursuit of his rival, got on the outside of him and then surged again. Kiyofumi was beaten, the rest of the field were nowhere and Edgar extricated himself from a bad position on the inside to burrow through a gap between the Australian Shane Kelly and Kiyofumi to win the silver.

“I left it a little later than normal,” said Hoy. “I knew if I went full gas they might pass me. I put in every ounce of effort. It was sheer hard work on my behalf and on behalf of the coaches. I had to think about the finish like nothing else. Once I got there, it was unbelievable.”

Hoy can win his third gold medal in the men’s sprint and though he has an outstanding chance, it will be the toughest of his three events. Beijing has been a great personal success for him but it is the team that he wanted to speak about: “I thought Athens was as good as it could get. And after the World Championships earlier this year, so many teams were saying we were as good as we could be, but we knew we had so much more to give.”

Not many give as much as Hoy, who is as fiercely competitive on the bike as he is affable off it. “You can be friendly and relaxed but you have a switch in your head and when you swing your leg over the bike and you’ve got a number on your back, it all changes.”

The Brits racing off for gold TV: BBC1, women’s individual pursuit, from 10.05 am

REBECCA ROMERO
Born in south London in January 1980, Romero took up rowing at the relatively late age of 17

Shortly after making her international debut in 2001, she finished fifth in the quadruple sculls at the world championships

Won Olympic silver medal alongside Alison Mowbray, Frances Houghton and Debbie Flood at the 2004 Games

Turned her attention to two wheels while she was injured and couldn’t row - and she duly won her first cycle race to become British champion

WENDY HOUVENAGHEL
From Magherafelt in Northern Ireland, the 33-year-old took up cycling just six years ago ‘to keep my husband company during his training rides’

A qualified dentist, who used to work for the Air Force, it was not until 2005 that she competed at world level - but within three years she was part of the GB team pursuit squad that won gold at the world track championships in Manchester