he liked, almost – almost! – without qualification. ‘Craig won sixteen gold medals with our club,’ he says with evident pride. ‘Chris won six,’ he adds less effusively.
If the diplomatic Hoy has a criticism of the City it is that, although expectations were high in terms of successes, support off it, in the form of coaching and guidance, left much to be desired. Hoy says he was ‘thirsty for knowledge. I knew I wasn’t doing the right training, that there were pieces of the puzzle missing. I was desperate to know what I should do, and I kept asking questions, but there weren’t many answers.’
It is also fair, however, to say that although Hoy’s progress in his early days with The City demonstrated he had talent, there was little to indicate that he would go on to become arguably the country’s most successful ever track rider. As well as his silver in the British junior sprint in 1994, he claimed two gold medals in the Scottish championships, winning the junior sprint and pursuit. Annable, typically, is dismissive. ‘The Scottish championship is a fish-n-chipper,’ he snorts, a ‘fish-n-chipper’ being one of those baffling pieces of sporting parlance – in cycling, it means inconsequential, rubbish.
October 1994 brought a significant development for the sport in the UK. The country’s first indoor velodrome was built, in Manchester, as part of the city’s planned bid for the 2000 Olympics. Costing £9 million, it proved an instant hit, not least with the City of Edinburgh Racing Club, who transferred their dominance from the traditional home of the national championships, in Leicester, to their new home in Manchester. In 1995, the first year the championships were held on the indoor track, the club won a new event, the team sprint. Hoy figured in that gold-medal winning team and also – illustrating his earlier point that he did have ‘an element of aerobic potential’ – in the silver-medal winning team pursuit team, contested over 4,000 m.
There began to be talk, already, of a ‘Manchester effect’ – namely, a raising of the standards of Britain’s track cyclists, who, finally, were able to train all year round, whatever the weather. It meant no more running for cover at the sight of rain. A Manchester Super League was established, with races held in the winter, traditionally the off-season, and with the riders representing cities, pitting Edinburgh against London, Birmingham, and Manchester.
But of all the talent that was beginning to shine from the mid-1990s, it was another Highlander – MacLean – who stood out. After Alexander, though Brydon was successful at British level, there had been no sprinters who made an impact on the international stage. At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona no British sprinters were even selected. And four years later, at Atlanta in 1996, it was the same again: no British sprinters were deemed good enough to go. It was, explained the British coach, Doug Dailey, simply a case of ‘quality control. They just weren’t fast enough.’
Speaking in 1997, Dailey admitted that the track sprinters had for several years been treated like outcasts. But, he explained, ‘That’s about to change now. There is real progress and my feeling is there’ll be a leading light who will drag sprinting along and set the standard other sprinters have to aspire to. This boy MacLean will set the standard and he can have a dramatic effect on sprinting.’ Sprinters tend to come in little groups – the Americans and Aussies have theirs. ‘MacLean,’ Dailey added confidently, ‘can become the Guv’nor.’
Chris Hoy’s flat, Manchester, October 2007
‘I’ve never talked about it with Craig but it must have been hard for him. He was the one breaking new ground, pushing the boundaries. He did the hard work. He was like a climber, he’d make the next foothold, and I’d follow. When someone else has forged ahead it’s easy to follow because you see it’s doable. But when you’re the one taking the first step, that’s a hard thing to do.’
Chris Hoy is sitting in his flat in Manchester, talking about Craig MacLean. It is fifteen years since the two first met – or met officially. Back then, they were finding their feet, both trying their hand at mountain biking, road cycling, a bit of track riding, both in the garish red-and-yellow of the Dunedin Cycling Club, both under the enthusiastic guidance of Ray Harris.
Like Hoy, MacLean’s background was in BMX, though because they were in different age categories, their paths didn’t cross. MacLean was five years older, born in 1971, hailing from the Highland town of Grantown-on-Spey, which nestles in the picturesque Spey Valley. Again like Hoy, MacLean retired from BMX-ing – a sport with a retirement age younger than female gymnastics – in his teens. He was fifteen when he stopped, having enjoyed some success, though not as much as Hoy. ‘My age group was more competitive than Chris’s,’ says MacLean with a wry smile. ‘But he’ll contest that.’
MacLean didn’t cycle for several years after that. He got into music – he plays guitar and drums – grew his hair long and dressed in AC/DC and Metallica T-shirts with the sleeves cut off. But after starting college in Edinburgh in 1990 he began using a bike for transport. ‘Just to go back and forth to college,’ he says. ‘I was quite prone to putting on weight in the winter, so I wanted to keep myself fit. My dad had always cycled so there were always bikes around the house, but I was more into my skiing and snowboarding at that time. And music, of course.’
On taking up cycling again MacLean visited George Swanson’s bike shop in Edinburgh – no longer known as Scotia, but in premises near the original shop – and the two of them chatted. ‘Chris was working in the shop part time,’ says MacLean, ‘but I didn’t really know Chris. I knew his name from my BMX days. I told George I’d got back into doing a bit of cycling and he told me about the velodrome at Meadowbank, and the track league on a Tuesday night. I started going down there for that, just to watch, cycling from one side of Edinburgh to Meadowbank. But that was the extent of my cycling, because once I got there I just sat and watched from the stand, then cycled home.
‘I didn’t know anyone there and, you know … I was from Grantown-on-Spey – you’re scared to speak to people,’ says MacLean with another smile. As he points out, he was still into his heavy rock phase, noting, deadpan, that ‘I had long blond ringlets.’ And, despite his wild man of rock look, he imagined he could sit in the stand at the velodrome and blend anonymously into the background? ‘Well, yeah … I just used to sit in the stand in my cycling kit and keep out the way.’
One week, as he was making his usual journey to the velodrome, he was overtaken by a motorbike, which slowed as it passed him and then pulled in. ‘This motorcyclist stopped, watched me pass, rode past me again, then stopped again – he kept doing that,’ says MacLean. ‘It was pretty strange.’
The motorcyclist was the father of Stewart Brydon, then Britain’s top sprinter. Brydon senior rode to Edinburgh from the west of Scotland on his motorbike every Tuesday evening to help with the track league. He had spotted MacLean sitting in the stand and recognized him. The blond ringlets probably helped. That evening, when he arrived at the velodrome, and took his usual seat in the stand, MacLean was approached by Brydon. ‘He talked to me and said I should come and have a go,’ says MacLean. ‘He encouraged me to turn up on a Friday for the Dunedin club night. So I went down on a Friday night, introduced myself, and they said, “Okay, if you want to join then you’ll have to prove your worth.” You had to be nominated and seconded at the monthly committee meeting. So the following month, after four weeks of me going on club runs and going to circuit training, my fate was decided.’
MacLean’s recollection of the club’s recruitment policy seems at odds with Ray Harris’s description of the inclusive Dunedin club, though it might have something to do with MacLean’s perception
