Heroes, Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britain’s Track Cycling Revolution
Fully updated to include the extraordinary scenes at London 2012, where Hoy won two more gold medals to bring his total to six and overtake Sir Steve Redgrave, this is the story of Britain's greatest ever Olympian.Chris Hoy has been instrumental in British track cycling's remarkable transformation from also-rans to world superpower. Now, having rewritten the record books as Olympic champion in four different cycling disciplines, and with six gold medals, Hoy has become a householdname and established himself in the pantheon of sporting greats.This is a fly-on-the-wall account of Hoy and his team as he prepared for the Beijing Olympics, where he became the first Briton in a century to win three gold medals in a single Games, and it has now been fully updated to include the extraordinary scenes at London 2012, where Hoy won two more gold medals, to bring his total to six and overtake Sir Steve Redgrave as Britain's greatest ever Olympian.The story begins with Hoy's introduction to cycling as a BMX racer and his progression to Olympic champion, and explains the origins and evolution of Britain's world-beating team. It includes a bizarre visit to the world's highest velodrome in Bolivia and a spellbinding journey from the razzmatazz of theEuropean six-day circuit to the craziness of the Japanese keirin races.Award-winning writer Richard Moore tracks Hoy throughout a season in the saddle, explores his motivations and mentors from a young age, and provides an unblemished insight into the mind of a champion and the largely unknown world of track cycling. It's a story that is fully updated with the remarkable events in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, two successive Olympic Games that were dominated by Hoy and the British track cycling team.
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Thank you to Chris Hoy, whose cooperation and support for this book has been – a bit like Chris himself – exemplary. Heroes, Villains & Velodromes is not Chris’s story, but Chris is the principal character, and, as he has so often been in the last decade, the star of the show.
Contents
Introduction: A Righteous Kick up the Arse
PART I: Portrait of the Athlete as a Young Man
1 BMX Bandits
2 The Kingcycle
3 The Wellydrome
4 The Guv’nor
PART 2: The Plan
5 Sliding Doors
6 The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Lime Green
7 Zero to Hero to Zero Again
8 Mind Games
9 Killing the Kilo
PART 3: Bolivia to Beijing
10 What Are We Here For?
11 Finally, a World Record
12 Looking After Number One
13 Big in Japan
14 The House Is on Fire; We’re Trying to Save the Furniture
15 ‘This Is Your Everest’
16 Foot to the Floor Time
Epilogue: Hot Pants and Magic Wheels
Plate Section
Chris Hoy Palmarès
Track Cycling Glossary
List of Searchable Terms
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
‘Excellence is an art won by training and habituation … we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.’
Aristotle
Palma de Mallorca, March 2007
The scent of drying concrete fills the air; scaffolding is everywhere; workmen go about their business with a sense of urgency, adding bits to the Palma de Mallorca Arena here, painting bits there. The impression is unmistakable, and not in the least encouraging. The 2007 Track Cycling World Championships begin here tomorrow, in a place that currently has the atmosphere, smell, appearance, sound, and ubiquitous dust, of an unfinished building.
However, deep in the centre of the arena, in what feels like its core, far from the madding construction, there is a rather surreal spectacle: a perfect oval of varnished wooden boards, glistening and shining as they reflect the bright spotlights – a bit like crashing through a waterfall and entering a peaceful, serene hideaway. In the case of the Palma Arena, the sight is that of a beautifully finished, brand new cycling track: 250 metres all the way round, with steep, wall-of-death-style banking at each end, sweeping into short straights, then quickly curling into the next banked bend.
And in this oval, burling around the bends, thundering along the brief straights, the British team, comprising eighteen riders – with twenty-eight support staff looking on – are going through their final training session before the championships. They are slick, organized and thoroughly impressive to watch; they also present a neat juxtaposition to the chaos outside, the only reminder of which is the occasional sound of a drill or some piece of machinery wafting in when a door opens.
But … hang on. Twenty-eight support staff to eighteen riders: did I hear that right? Are twenty-eight people really necessary? I suggest to Dave Brailsford, the British Cycling performance director, that this seems ‘a healthy ratio’. ‘It’s a winning ratio,’ smiles Brailsford, a man who manages, somehow, to appear simultaneously intense and relaxed as he watches his men and women whirl around the velodrome in a blur of red, white and blue.
I am here in particular to see one of Brailsford’s ‘blue-chip’ athletes, and a man regularly described as the ultimate athlete – the Olympic and world champion Chris Hoy. Chris and I were team-mates once. We were in the same Scotland team at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, but in many ways we belonged to different eras. For him, the Commonwealth Games were the start – they provided a springboard. For me, they were the end, the Commonwealth Games being as high as the bar of my ambition – I use the word advisedly – was set. In my case, a springboard with a malfunctioning spring – more like a trapdoor, really.
Back then, Hoy tended to be a little in the shadow of another rider, slightly older than him – Craig MacLean. The two of them came as a package: they were both blond, they were similar in appearance, they seemed inseparable and were constantly mistaken for each other. Craig used to sit in the apartment in the games village strumming his guitar. Chris didn’t play the guitar but he was, in other respects, Craig’s mini-me. There was something that set these two apart from the rest of the team, though. It was clear they were going places. The bar of their ambition was set fairly high; precisely how high, no one – not even them – could have imagined.
I was at those games, if I am honest, for the T-shirt (and three polo shirts, tracksuit, sweatshirt, shirt, tie, smart trousers, kilt and sporran, brogues, kit bag, racing and training kit … and yes, it says it all that I can reel that list off without really thinking about it).
‘That [Kuala Lumpur] Commonwealth Games,’ Hoy said to me on one occasion, ‘was the last games where the Scotland team had the attitude of being second-class citizens, and of thinking, “We’re gonna get humped here, but at least we’ve got the clothing.”’
