Let’s play make-believe for a second and make two big assumptions. First,
let’s pretend that the track cycling team are the only athletes that we send
to Beijing to represent Great Britain in the Olympics this summer. And
secondly, let’s say that their results and performances in all their
blood-pumping, breast-swelling, legs-cranking glory are absolutely identical
to what occurred in Manchester last week.
The amazing statistic is that those 20 or so athletes would have won more gold
medals than all but three British Olympic teams since the Second World War.
That’s not Olympic cycling teams, but all the competitors that the country
sent to any particular Games in all sports. Only the British teams for
Athens 2004, Sydney 2000 and Melbourne in 1956 would have won more.
Britain’s target of finishing fourth in the medal table in London 2012
doesn’t feel ambitious any more if one sport can win seven golds.
But it is not just the Olympic classes that are impressive; of the 18 events
on offer at the Track World Championships, Britain won half. It’s a
domination that no cycling nation has achieved before and sends a warning
shot to all the others before the Olympics.
In Olympic circles, people talk of the top four sports (athletics, rowing,
sailing and cycling) in revered tones, but if the competition days in the
Laoshan Velodrome in Beijing are anything like last week, there should
really be only one sport to which the ultimate respect is paid. Never has an
Olympic sport burst on to the scene in this country with such a calculated
and deserved medal haul.
It is easy, of course, to get overexcited and start counting medals before the
Games, but one of the impressive things is how sanguine the British cycling
hierarchy are about its success. In a sporting landscape in dire need of
some good news, it could be forgiven for opening the champagne, asking for
more lottery money and handing out some advice to other British sports. But
no, David Brailsford, the performance director, has his feet firmly attached
to the velodrome floor.
“It’s not our job to advise anyone else,” he said, “I’m trying to do the best
for British Cycling. Look at what happened in the rugby World Cup and
England’s performance. Not one expert would have predicted that. Sport just
isn’t linear. But what I will say is that the team that gets on the plane to
Beijing will be the best prepared team we’ve ever had.”
Brailsford has been involved in cycling for long enough to have seen the full
parabola of the team’s improvement. “We’ve been absolutely battered in the
past and, although I think we’ve definitely raised our game this year from
eight out of ten to 8½ the other teams are really closing up from a four to
an eight. Just look at the men’s team sprint.” The three-man sprint team
were beaten into silver by the French — perhaps the only result of the
week’s competition that was short of perfect for Britain.
But Brailsford should be shipped out to some of the other sports because there
is lots to learn from cycling’s success. First, it is noteworthy how the
sport has created and nurtured its talent. It has inherited athletes from
other sports. Take Shanaze Reade, who has come from mountain biking, and
became world champion for the second time in the women’s team sprint on
Thursday; or Rebecca
Romero, who was in the rowing team and a silver medal-winner in Athens, and
was a rowing world champion in 2005. She has, under British Cycling’s
instruction, become a world champion in her second sport in less than three
years.
Romero was infamous on the rowing team for never smiling or enjoying her
training, but hasn’t been able to wipe a broad grin off her face since
winning on Thursday. Rowing gave her an ability to train and push herself
when she didn’t want to go farther — mainly because she didn’t want to do
it. Cycling has taken all that and made her enjoy her sport, and it shows.
Chris Hoy has been retuned into the finest sprinter track cycling has known.
Having undergone the indignity of seeing his favoured event, the kilometre
time-trial, lose its Olympic status for Beijing, the Athens gold
medal-winner simply swapped events to the sprint. He went into it with
plenty of power in his prodigious legs, but the coaches had to teach him
tactics and a turn of speed. When he won the sprint title in Manchester he
became the first Briton to hold the title for more than 50 years and another
Olympic gold medal favourite.
Cycling squeezed two gold medals out of Victoria Pendleton, an individual
built for road racing, racing against women who looked like road builders.
But, once again, the careful moulding of her slight frame has given her the
quickest leg speed in women’s cycling.
They have also taken two of our best professional riders in Bradley Wiggins
and Mark Cavendish and made them champions in the madison, and for Wiggins
there were two more gold medals in the pursuits. These are fully paid-up
members of some of the world’s best professional cycling teams, and yet
something about British cycling makes them come back from road racing to
compete on the track.
Secondly, the team dynamic is impressive. Coaches work together, which sounds
obvious, but in sport it can often be confusing as to who one is supposed to
be competing against. Lots of our Olympic sports are characterised by
divisions and fiefdoms, where one person rules a few athletes and is mainly
motivated by beating the other lot down the road. We are often so busy
trying to beat each other that the importance of the podium gets lost
somewhere.
Finally, Brailsford showed a keen regard for his next generation. While his
top performers were winning over the weekend, and the National Anthem seemed
to be being played on a loop at the Manchester Velodrome, much of his
concentration was about protecting his younger team members. They were
apparently terrified of letting the side down and being a disappointment to
the home crowd.
Brailsford and his coaching team were careful to set goals for each person
that were individual and tailored to the situation. “We give everyone
targets to go for and a gold medal for their process, irrespective of what’s
happening on the track. We don’t talk about medals — we talk about times.”
For British cycling, with 130 days until the Beijing Games start, let the good
times roll.
The track to triumph
1992 Chris Boardman, coached by Peter Keen, wins Olympic pursuit gold
medal in Barcelona
1994 Manchester Velodrome constructed and labelled “white elephant” by
local media
1997 Funding crisis in British Cycling takes organisation to within 28
days of insolvency and closure of velodrome
1998 Keen, as British Cycling performance director, obtains funding for
World Class Performance Plan from National Lottery
1999 David Brailsford joins British Cycling as programme director
2000 Jason Queally wins men's sprint gold at Sydney Olympics
2002 Chris Hoy wins world kilometre time-trial title and Team GB win
world men's team sprint gold
2003 Bradley Wiggins wins world individual pursuit title
2004 Steve Peters, a psychiatrist, joins Team GB
2004 Hoy and Wiggins win gold medals at Athens Olympic Games
2005 Great Britain dominate at World Track Championships in Los
Angeles, winning four gold medals, a silver and a bronze
2007 Team GB win world title in men's team pursuit for first time,
Victoria Pendleton wins three sprint golds as Britain win seven golds in
total in Majorca
2008 British riders excel, winning nine gold medals at Manchester Track
World Championships
Words by Jeremy Whittle
