ATHENS GOLD medallist Chris Hoy has vowed to bounce back from the blow of seeing his specialist event removed from the Olympic programme by bringing back not one, but three gold medals from Beijing.
The pinnacle of the Edinburgh track cyclist's career to date was his 2004 gold medal in the kilometre time trial, setting a new sea-level world record. But just months after that success, Hoy learned that his event was to be dropped for Beijing to m
ake way for a new cycling medal event – BMX.
But after fearing at first that his career would be cut short, he redirected his energies from the kilo into two other individual disciplines – and his confidence is such that he now feels he can win both, as well as helping Britain to gold in the team sprint.
"I've been very fortunate I've managed to find two new events I can do to replace the kilo and it's given me a new lease of life," said Hoy. "I really did think I was going to focus on the team sprint when the kilo was dropped and I was going to put all my eggs in that one basket."
With no Olympic medal to defend, after winning gold at the World Championships for the fourth year running in Palma de Mallorca last year, Hoy retired from the kilo to concentrate on the team sprint. To help prepare for that event he took up the keirin – in which a motorcyclist sets the pace for a field of six to nine riders before a sprint for the line – and the individual sprint, a tactical bout between two riders vying to gain a positional advantage before a race to the line, as opposed to the straight battle against the clock of the kilo.
"The sprint and the keirin were just going to be additional events to improve my speed for the team sprint but they've gone way beyond what I thought was possible – and to be going to Beijing with a realistic chance of three gold medals in three events is just incredible."
Hoy was speaking in Manchester last week at the launch of Heroes, Villains And Velodromes, a new book on the revolution in British track cycling over the past 12 years – a revolution in which the 31-year-old Scot has been the central character.
In that time, with the injection of Lottery funding and fresh ideas, initially under performance director Peter Keen and carried on by his successor Dave Brailsford, the British squad has been transformed from no-hopers to world leaders.
The structure now is "almost unrecognisable", says Hoy. "When I first raced here at the World Championships in '96 it was a real shoestring budget. We were one of the poorest nations in cycling and to even think we could compete against the French, the Germans, the Australians, was a pipe dream at that stage."
Compare that with the 2008 World Championships at Manchester, when Britain took nine of the 18 gold medals on offer.
"We really are the team to beat at the moment," says Hoy. "One of my great rivals of all time, Arnaud Tournant, the French rider (and world kilo record holder], has commented that the British team is the only professional team in the world of track cycling, the rest of the countries are all amateur by comparison."
Hoy's own medal haul at this year's World Championships was two golds and a silver – the silver in the team sprint and the golds in the keirin and sprint, the individual disciplines he had adopted to hone his skills for the team event.
Accepted wisdom in the keirin was that the best tactic was to sit in the middle of the pack until the pace-setter breaks away, and then make your move in a burst of speed for the line. Almost naively, Hoy took to this new – to him – discipline by sitting right behind the motorcycle to be at the front at the split, hoping to then hold off the pack with sheer power. The result has been spectacular. Not only is he now world champion two years running, he is unbeaten in 24 successive keirins going into the Olympics.
So, even though his first-choice event has been dropped, unlike in Athens, he goes into Beijing with the weight of expectation of success on his shoulders.
He accepts this, yet refuses to be complacent. "You can never predict how many medals you're going to win or what colour they're going to be because there's so many other factors involved," he says. "You don't know how your rivals are going to be performing. There's loads of things outwith your control so you don't worry about them, you just step up there and do the things you can have an impact on and hope that's good enough."
If not complacency, at least the results in Manchester give Hoy and his team-mates self-belief, and his experience of winning Olympic gold also stands him in good stead. "Having been through that experience previously gives you the confidence to know that you can deal with that kind of pressure. Until that point (in Athens] I'd never experienced anything like that and I've never experienced anything since like that. But now I know that when it comes to the Olympics in Beijing, whatever comes my way, I can deal with it and that gives you confidence."
Hoy also takes heart from the knowledge that he is benefiting from the most professional training, analysis and coaching support in the world and that he is prepared to push himself to the absolute limits in training to give himself an edge over his rivals. "I always say that you win gold medals not just on the night at the race but in the weeks and months prior to that, when you really push yourself to the point that you believe that no one else is doing the same as you, no one else is pushing as hard as you. Not only does it make a physiological difference in your training, but your psychological strength when you get to the race day and you believe that you couldn't possibly have worked any harder, that's what gives me the strength."
