journeys were restricted to Scottish teams; at UK level, Britain’s cyclists repeatedly travelled to the Olympics, and returned – one or two notable exceptions notwithstanding – similarly ‘burdened by highly embarrassing statistics’. We were British: that was what we did. We got humped, as Hoy might put it.
Oh, but how times change. In Palma a new era is upon us – but more on Palma in a moment. This is the story of how that has happened: how the British team reinvented itself, and how Chris Hoy – who has been at the vanguard of this revolution, and is the central character in this story – is the embodiment of this new era in British cycling.
In one sense, Hoy was fortunate to find himself in the right place at the right time. In another, he is the perfect athlete to act as flag-bearer – because Hoy epitomizes all that is successful about British cycling. His finest hour up to that point was on a stifling hot evening in Athens in August 2004. The kilometre time trial at the Athens Olympics: Hoy’s event. As reigning world champion, he was last man to go – a mixed blessing. As he awaited his turn, he was forced to watch no fewer than three riders break the existing world record, knowing that he would have to step up and go faster than all of them – and faster, of course, than he had ever gone before.
Each new world record inevitably made Hoy’s task appear more and more difficult – impossible, even. Watching it unfold on TV, I found myself making excuses for him. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, he had done well to be crowned world champion. He, however, was not thinking along such lines. Finally, it was his turn to step up to the plate, as they say, and Hoy, looking like a man about to face the gallows – albeit clad in his unlikely ‘death suit’ of lycra – stood up, and walked awkwardly to the track in his cleated cycling shoes. And hurriedly, since a mistake with the timing device meant the countdown began early.
That technical glitch – possibly even more than the three world records he had just witnessed – was the moment when panic should have taken over. But if he was rattled, it didn’t show. Instead, he sat on the wooden boards, looking confident rather than pensive, while the mechanics fitted his bike into the starting gate. Then he climbed aboard, took several deep breaths, as if inflating his body down to his ankles, and settled forward, wrapping his fingers carefully around the handlebars, standing up on the pedals, waiting for the clock to finish its countdown. And when the last five seconds had cranked up the tension to an almost unbearable degree, he went off like a bomb, releasing enough power to illuminate a small village.
As Hoy started his ride, cheeks puffed out, legs pumping, I watched in a pub in Edinburgh, where the atmosphere was close to that of a football match. We roared at the TV, and when, after four laps, he flashed across the line in a world record time, we cheered, and I turned to a friend and said, ‘Did I mention that he and I were team mates …?’
Something else that happened in the build-up to Hoy’s ride in Athens was telling. While he was warming up, a medal presentation from another event got underway; but when it came to the national anthem, while many continued what they were doing, Hoy stopped, dismounted, and stood in respectful silence for the duration of the anthem, before remounting his bike and resuming his warm-up for the biggest race of his life.
Back to Palma. The stakes are high as we near the end of another four-year Olympic cycle and the 2008 Beijing games loom on the horizon. Hoy is in action on the first night of the world championships, in the team sprint, a thrilling three-man race that, like many of the track racing disciplines, can appear utterly bamboozling to the outsider. But it is actually very simple. In a nutshell: three men start, one finishes. Opening that nutshell and examining the contents: the trio line up together on the start line, side-by-side-by-side. On the opposite side of the track their opponents do the same. On the inside is the lead-out man, who rides the first lap flat out and then swings up the banking; next to him is the rider who, having followed an inch behind him on the first lap, will hit the front on lap two; and on the outside is the rider who will finish off the job, completing the third and final lap alone. For Team GB, the experienced – that sporting euphemism for ‘old’ – Craig MacLean is the lead-out man; the young pretender Ross Edgar is number two; the dependable Chris Hoy is the anchor. Hoy makes a comparison with athletics to explain their specific roles: ‘Man one needs the pure speed of a 100 m sprinter; man two has the speed and staying power of a 200 m specialist; man three needs the speed and endurance of a 400 m runner.’
The British trio qualifies fastest. It puts them into the final, against the French, where MacLean – billed as ‘the world’s fastest man over one lap’ – explodes out of the start gate, all popping eyes and pumping arms and then, after a lap, swings up the banking, allowing Edgar to come past, with Hoy remaining in Edgar’s slipstream. They are 0.290 seconds down on the French after a lap; Edgar reduces it to 0.281 after two, then swings up the banking as they approach the line. Hoy hits the front.
And now, not for the first time, we are treated to a head-to-head between Hoy and his old rival Arnaud Tournant. Hoy puts in a stunning lap, or perhaps Tournant slows down – it is difficult to tell. They are neck-and-neck on opposite sides of the track, and as they cross the line it is impossible for one pair of eyes to separate them.
The clock can, however. Just. The French have completed the three laps in 43.830 seconds – a world record; the British in 43.832 – also a world record, had the French not gone two-thousandths of a second quicker. So it’s silver for Hoy, Edgar and MacLean.
‘There wasn’t much else we could do,’ says MacLean. ‘But I’m sure when we look at the video we’ll pick a few things out. There’s always room for improvement.’ ‘Tonight the French were outstanding,’ adds Hoy, ‘but at least we got that ride out the way before Beijing. We’ll be better then.’
The following evening in Palma is the keirin, a discipline with its origins in Japan, where it forms a betting industry worth $7.5 billion a year; ‘kei’ means bet in Japanese, ‘rin’ means wheel. Many seem to be under the impression that ‘keirin’ means fight – which it doesn’t, though it would be fitting if it did.
The keirin is a sprinters’ event where six of them fall into line behind a motorcycle-mounted pacer, who over several laps gradually winds up the pace. There can be jostling for position, but generally the cyclists form an orderly line behind the motorcycle pacer and remain in order until, with two-and-a-half laps remaining, he swings off. Then, with the speed up to around 30 mph, it becomes a straight fight for the line, or as straight a fight as you can expect with six sprinters – who by definition are muscle-bound, (naturally produced) testosterone-fuelled alpha-males – competing with each other for the most advantageous position, which is generally held to be third or fourth man in line, where you have the benefit of shelter plus the advantage of surprise should you choose to launch an early attack.
But in Palma, Hoy doesn’t ride the keirin like this. He opts for a different tactic altogether. In the semi-final he tucks in behind the pacer, as first man in the string of six riders. When the pacer disappears Hoy stays there, ramping up the speed with deceptive ease, and effectively making it impossible for his opponents to come past him. His is a victory based on sheer power rather than tactical acumen.
In the other semi-final his team-mate Ross Edgar takes the opposite approach. With a lap to go he is last man, placed sixth and seemingly out of it. Yet, despite the fact they’re now travelling at around 40 mph, the compact, stocky Edgar manages an extraordinary surge, injecting enough speed to propel himself around the outside of the five flying bodies, to cross the line first. More of a pure sprinter than the powerful Hoy, Edgar has just demonstrated why, at twenty-four, he is tipped as one of the world’s hottest prospects. It is a performance that is destined to become a YouTube classic.
So to the final, and a fascinating contrast in styles – but it is not just about Hoy and Edgar. There are another four riders, most notably Theo Bos, the rapid Dutchman. Bos – or ‘The Boss’ – is the fastest man in the world, the
