the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, and it was here that he demonstrated just what a talented rider he was – and hinted at how far he might have gone had the playing field been level. Being the Olympics, there was only one rider per nation, which meant a guarantee of only one East German in the semi-finals. And Alexander, incredibly, made it that far, finally finishing in the worst place of all – just out of the medals in fourth. Lutz Hesslich, ‘the man with the broadest shoulders in cycling,’ was the Olympic champion, as he had been in 1980. Alexander, though, became the first British sprinter to reach the last four since Reg Harris, some forty years earlier.
The near-miss prompted Alexander, an amateur whose day job was to design power stations, to reflect on the ‘Cinderella status’ of British track racing: ‘A lot of these guys have been in training camps or preparing in Europe. What did we get? Five days at Leicester [the outdoor track which hosted the British championships] and it rained on two of those.’
In the following years Brydon inherited Alexander’s title as Britain’s fastest sprinter, though he didn’t make the same impact as Alexander on the international stage. At the British championships the City of Edinburgh sprinters were dominant – the East Germany, if you like, of the British scene – with Alexander, Brydon and Steve Paulding taking a clean sweep of the medals in 1989. The success in this discipline satisfied the club’s ‘Godfather’, Annable, for it was sprinting that enthused and excited him. As far as he was concerned, it was real racing.
‘You have to make a distinction between an athletic event and a race,’ says Annable. ‘My emotions are for racing, which for me means match sprinting. The most boring event in the world for me is the qualifying round for the women’s pursuit. Riding fast against the watch doesn’t excite me, whether it’s the kilo, pursuit or team sprint. That’s not a race! Whereas the racing from the quarter-finals of the sprint is electrifying. It appeals to my emotions.
‘When I started there were two ways into the sport of cycling,’ he continues. ‘On the road you had the inspiration of the Tour de France, the mountains and all the rest of it. But in Britain at that time you couldn’t road race – massed start racing on the roads was banned. You could time trial or ride on the track, and track racing was huge. Heavyweight boxers and sprint cyclists were superstars in those days.’
And the biggest star of all was Reg Harris, whose bronze statue now looms over the final bend of the Manchester Velodrome, the home of British cycling. Harris, born in 1920, won the amateur world sprint title in 1947, following that with two Olympic silver medals in 1948, in the sprint and tandem sprint, despite having fractured two vertebrae three months earlier, then falling and smashing his elbow just weeks before the games. But it was as a professional that he made his name: he won the world sprint title four times between 1949 and 1954. Then, perhaps even more famously, he came back twenty years later, winning the 1974 British title at the age of fifty-four.
Harris embodied the familiar traits of the star sprinter. He had panache, and, with his huge legs and puffed-out chest, the confident swagger of the sprinter. Backing up Annable’s claim that the sprinters were huge stars, his feats also captured the imagination of the wider sporting public: in 1950, for example, he was named Sportsman of the Year by the Sports Journalists’ Association, and he was twice named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Harris was colourful and controversial. He married three times, ran numerous businesses, including the Fallowfield Stadium velodrome, which he renamed the Harris Stadium, and started a ‘Reg Harris’ line of bikes. The man dubbed ‘Britain’s first cycling superstar’, and known as ‘Sir Reg’ on account of his incongruously cut-glass accent and debonair manner, died after a stroke in 1992.
In some ways it seems strange that Harris is held up as the gentleman of British cycling and the grandfather of British sprinting. He was certainly utterly ruthless in pursuit of victory, and, according to some witnesses, not above skulduggery or dubious tactics. Tommy Godwin, the other great British track rider of the 1940s and 1950s, writes about Harris in his autobiography, It Wasn’t That Easy, and the picture that emerges is of a devious, scheming rider. In one race, writes Godwin, ‘I passed Reg on the final bend and was into the straight when suddenly a pull on my saddle almost stopped me. My friend Harris [safe to assume he is being sarcastic here] wanted to win the final sprint in front of his home crowd, which he did. My response was to get to him as soon as possible and physically attack him.’ Godwin also makes allegations of race-fixing and, at one point, tells of an exchange with a Belgian soigneur – a cyclist’s masseur/trainer/unofficial doctor – named Louis Guerlache, who offers him ‘a little help’. Writes Godwin: ‘The inference of this I understood. I immediately said, “No, if I can’t do it with what I have been gifted with then I don’t want it.” But at the mention of “No” Louis had picked up all the things laid out for the massage, threw them into his suitcase, which was packed with about half a chemist’s shop, and stormed away.’ Later in his book, Godwin notes wryly, and without comment, of one of Harris’s world titles that: ‘His trainer was Louis Guerlache, a Belgian.’
Annable’s eyes light up as he remembers Tommy Godwin, his own particular favourite. He, to Annable, was a real racer. And he has seen enough of them now come through the City of Edinburgh, with the club snapping up any track cyclist with a modicum of talent and plenty of ambition. Meadowbank has always proved the testing ground; the weekly track league, on a Tuesday evening, provides a showcase, or audition, for any aspiring young rider. Arguably no other track in the UK has produced such a conveyor belt of talent, or so many British medallists.
There is no question, though, about who is the best of them all. Chris Hoy is the only individual world champion – with seven individual world titles among his nine gold medals – and, of course, the only Olympic champion to have taken his first pedal strokes at Meadowbank, and to come through the ranks of ‘The City’.
Yet Annable, asked if Hoy is the most talented rider he has worked with, hesitates. ‘His head wasn’t good initially,’ he says, eventually, and in his very matter-of-fact way. Annable is talking of the 1994 national track championships at Leicester, where a pulled foot led to Hoy finishing fifth in the junior kilo. He also placed sixth in the junior points race, but it was in the sprint – Annable’s favourite – which served as a demonstration of his potential. Hoy qualified fastest, with 11.777 seconds, beating the best junior sprinter of the day, James Taylor. ‘James Taylor’s mother came over to me after that,’ recalls Annable, ‘and said, “God, you’ve got another one – who’s he?”’
Someone else who was impressed was Doug Dailey, the national coach. He was sitting in the stand, just behind Hoy’s parents. ‘I overheard him saying, “That kid looks like he’s got something about him,”’ recalls David Hoy. ‘I spoke to him later, told him I was Chris’s dad, and he repeated what he’d said. Chris was over the moon to hear that.’
He progressed to the final, to meet the experienced Taylor in a race that also saw Hoy make his first TV appearance – it was broadcast by a new satellite sports channel called Sky Sports. ‘He got to the final,’ says Annable, ‘against Taylor, and I said, “Look Chris, you may be faster, but he can stop you riding. He’ll put you against the barriers and do whatever it takes to stop you.” I told him exactly how to get out: “Don’t chicken out!” I told him. “He can’t hurt you; he can intimidate you.” But Chris was outmanoeuvred, and Taylor got the better of him, beating him in two straight rides.’
This is what Annable means with his assertion that Hoy’s ‘head wasn’t good initially’. It seems a harsh judgement on a seventeen year old. He must be surprised that Hoy became his first and only Olympic champion. ‘You have to give him his due,’ says Annable, grudgingly. ‘His single-mindedness has been phenomenal and so has his work rate. It took him a long, long time. He is now much bigger, physically, through specialized gym training, but it’s taken him years. When he made up his mind, and had the confidence to know what to do, I mean, you can’t fault him’ –
