Richard Moore - Heroes, Villains and Velodromes - Chris Hoy and Britain’s Track Cycling Revolution

Sporting success, skulduggery, psychiatry, suspicions of systematic doping, in a world of heroes, villains and velodromes … there could be a hell of a story here, I thought.

A couple of weeks after Palma, a month before he was to travel to Bolivia to try and set a new world kilometre record, I sat down with Hoy in a bar in Edinburgh and gave him my spiel: ‘I’d like to write a book – about you, and about this incredible year you have in front of you, taking in Bolivia, the World Cups, the crazy keirin circuit in Japan, the madness of six-day racing, the world championships in Manchester … and looking ahead to Beijing. Only, it won’t really be about you, as such, well it will, and it won’t – it’ll be part your story, your BMX-ing as a kid, that sort of thing, but it’ll also be the story of the British team – the revolution there’s been over the last ten years. I mean, it’s an incredible story, really, when you think about it … what do you think?

‘Okay,’ said Hoy.

PART 1 Contents Cover Title Page Epigraph ‘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 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

Portrait of the Athlete as a Young Man Contents Cover Title Page Epigraph ‘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 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

CHAPTER 1 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

BMX Bandits 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

Ile de Ré, France, August 1992

Though he wasn’t to know it at the time, a seminal moment in Chris Hoy’s career occurred while he was on a family holiday on Ile de Ré, La Rochelle, western France, in August 1992. He was sixteen. And he had hired a bike for the holiday – a mountain bike.

At the same time, several hundred miles south of Ile de Ré, in the Spanish city of Barcelona, the Olympics were taking place, and a remarkable thing was happening there. It was remarkable if you were British, and a cyclist. Because a British cyclist by the name of Chris Boardman had reached the final of the men’s pursuit, and appeared to be on the verge of winning Britain’s first cycling gold medal in eighty-four years, when the quartet of Leonard Meredith, Ernest Payne, Charles Kingsbury and Benjamin Jones were victorious in the 1,810.5 metre team pursuit at the 1908 London Olympics. Boardman’s breakthrough was like Eddie the Eagle winning the ski jump – or seemed like it to many people.

And the British media responded accordingly – which is to say that, rather than focus on the athletic achievement, or any physical talent that Boardman may have possessed, they discovered a quirky angle: the fact that Boardman was riding a space-age Lotus bike, promptly christened ‘Superbike’. Super man , meanwhile, was all but ignored.

Boardman says now that he didn’t mind – that in fact it worked in his favour. ‘It was part of the package; it was a ploy if you like,’ he says, hinting that he was as devious – or clever – then as he is now, in his current role as the man who holds the keys to the Secret Squirrel Club. ‘That bike had actually been to more than one World Cup before the Olympics,’ reveals Boardman. ‘But I hadn’t ridden it – Bryan Steel had. But because Bryan only finished eighth on it, nobody really noticed. In the end, yes, the bike got lots of publicity, probably more than me, but people still remember it and talk about it today. So I don’t regret that at all.’

In Ile de Ré, meanwhile, the sixteen-year-old Hoy, fanatical about cycling, and by now becoming interested in track cycling, genuinely was interested in the fact that a British rider – and not just a space-age bike – was in the final. ‘I remember being so excited about the Olympics,’ recalls Hoy. ‘The final was in the evening. We didn’t have a television where we were staying so I’d been listening to Boardman’s progress on the radio thanks to the BBC World Service. I remember calling my dad to come, because the final was on. And I remember listening to the final, hearing Boardman win, and being so inspired that I went straight out on the mountain bike I’d hired. I did ten miles flat out on that bike every day, and I’d already been out earlier in the day. But I went out and did it again.

‘It’s funny, I’ve watched that Olympic pursuit final since then, and it bears no relation to my memory of it. The images don’t remind me of how I felt at the time.

‘After that holiday we went straight to the British track championships in Leicester. I’d just started riding the track. But Boardman was there with his Lotus bike. I rode round behind him for a few laps and sneaked into a photo. I remember being completely in awe.’

Boardman’s Barcelona success acted as the launch pad not only for Boardman, who was propelled into a professional career on the continent, but also for his coach, Peter Keen, and, ultimately, you could argue, for the sport in the UK. What Keen did with Boardman he eventually replicated, on a far bigger scale, with the British team. In 1997 he was appointed by the British Cycling Federation to devise a ‘World Class Performance Plan’, which – in a revolutionary development – would receive millions in National Lottery funding. For the sport of cycling, things were about to change, and Hoy would be one of the main beneficiaries – indeed, he would be integral to the programme that Keen established. But no one – perhaps not even Keen – could have foreseen how dramatic the change would be.