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Stepping Stones to London for Chris Hoy
Story posted March 20, 2010; by Larry Hickmott with team GB
A real crowd pleaser, Chris Hoy throws his bike at the line to beat Kevin Sireau of France and become World Champion in 2008.
This week in Ballerup (Denmark), nine time World Champion and four time Olympic Gold medal winner, Chris Hoy will look to assess where he is with two years to go to the London Olympics. His first World Track Championships since the Beijing Olympics will be about finding his legs again in a competition where he knows his rivals will be out to knock him off his pedestal. Should they manage that in these championships, it won’t bother him, not deep down anyway. Chris Hoy knows he has to pace himself to be the best he can be in London 2012 where he will leave no stone unturned to repeat the success he had in the 2008 Olympiad.
That was the impression he gave when we spoke at Manchester airport on our way to Denmark for the 2010 UCI Track Cycling World Championships. Walking through the airport with Sir Chris Hoy, you get a measure of how winning three Olympic Gold medals in the one Olympiad has changed his life. We hadn’t even got through the front door of terminal 1 when a well wisher wanted to shake his hand. Then, as we walked along looking for some where quiet to talk, another person requested an autograph while others looked at him and smiled. Chris Hoy is certainly a sporting celebrity in the home of Team GB (cycling), Manchester.
Chris Hoy resplendent in a rainbow jersey in 2008. He's won nine and will have chances at three more at this years Track Cycling World Championships. Photo: Richard Robotham.
Chris Hoy is without doubt an inspiration to many and not just to other cyclists who want to be sprinters like him. He’s the consummate professional but everything outside of racing is just a distraction right now because his focus this week is about doing the best he can at these World Championships. That may not be the best we’ll see of Chris in the long term, but more simply, the best he can be right now. “First and foremost, this week is about the titles because it still means a lot to be world champion and winning a rainbow jersey again would be a great achievement” he explained over a coffee. “It’s something I am driven and motivated by but there is the bigger picture as well. This week, after all, is a stepping stone towards London 2012.”
“It will be a guide to how we are after trying new things in training and having tweaked things here and there. The World Championship is the best chance to see how those changes are working out. If we win and dominate, it doesn’t mean it was a breeze and everything is going great and vice versa, if we don’t wipe the board with Gold medals, it is not a disaster. It is a stepping stone to where we want to be.”
Above: Chris Hoy, centre, during a Team Sprint trial in the lead up to the Track Cycling World Championships. Read about them here
With nine titles already to his name, his first won in Ballerup in 2002, Chris says that every one of them feels different and that he can remember each one of the nine so far. “Each one was special for a different reason” he says “and so it isn’t as if I’m starting to forget them or they are all rolled into one. They are all very special and if I can win another Gold medal to make it ten, that would be amazing. Winning a tenth and so on isn’t what drives me on though but it is a nice statistic to drop into a conversation” he said with a smile.
In the lead up to these championships, Chris admits he has tweaked things in his training but also says that it’s important to remember the other things that have worked. “You keep the same basic frame work and then tweak things here and there” he explained. “There have been a few things I have tweaked this year and I feel there are a few more things I can change between now and London. I do have to pace myself though. London is close but it is still far enough away that if I really went all out and trained like an absolute lunatic this year, and put everything into this season, there is the danger that by the time I came to London 20102, I’d run out of steam. So I am trying to manage it so the best comes in two and a bit years time.”
Challengers to the Knights Throne
Chris Hoy’s closest challenger in Beijing and at the last Revolution meeting at Manchester was a young Olympic champion called Jason Kenny from Bolton. Off the bike, the two of them laugh and joke and seemingly enjoy each other’s company but on the track, they are fierce rivals if the encounter at the last Revolution was anything to go by. It was, in many people’s eyes, the best sprint match for many a year and Jason looked to have made up some ground on his teammate.
Beijing 2008 and Chris and Jason enjoy a joke prior to the medal ceremony. Photo: Phil O'Conner.
Chris Hoy however has an interesting view on that rivalry saying “I think people perceive there to be this big gap between us and it is getting smaller and smaller but that isn’t the case. Really, sometimes the gap is the other way round and in training Jason is better than me and he has been for the last couple of years. To be beaten by Jason would not be a surprise because it happens quite regularly in training which the public don’t get to see. I treat Jason the same way on the track as I do anyone else. You commit 100 per cent and try to beat them with everything you have got.”
That last statement is perhaps quite telling because it is not just Hoy’s physical ability on a bike that is so special but also his determination which comes to the fore when he feels victory on the boards is under threat. It is when under pressure that Chris Hoy really does shine so bright on a bike. Having such strong competition in the team is also something that helps Chris stay on top of his game. “I have definitely benefited from having this strong competition within the team” he says. “To have all these guys pushing for places just keeps that pressure on me and them as well.”
Revolution 28 and Chris Hoy comes past Jason Kenny who is doing everything he can to beat the nine time World Champion.
An example of that pressure he is under comes in the lead-up to a major competition when the coaches will hold a day of trials to find the riders for a key event, the Team Sprint. Anyone who saw Chris in Beijing will look at his performances and see an athlete who most of the time looks unbeatable. But, like every other member of the Great Britain Cycling team’s sprint squad, Chris has to rock up for such trials and compete against his teammates to earn that place in the Team Sprint. In that last trial, like many before it, Chris seems to have done rather well and the Team Sprint line up for the 2010 World Championships appears to be Jason Kenny, Ross Edgar and Chris Hoy in that order.
Chris though doesn’t take these trials lightly as he explains. “They are always difficult because they’re behind closed doors and there is no atmosphere. You go into them knowing how important they are and aware of what the repercussions are if you turn up not going well. At the same time, you want to peak for the real competition so it’s about getting that balance right where two weeks out, you’re going well enough to still make the team but not peak at the wrong time.”
Hoy’s Flirt with the Team Pursuit
Finally, Chris admits he’s finding it quite interesting to see how some one he grew up with in the Great Britain team, Jason Queally, goes in the Team Pursuit. It is certainly one of the big stories to come out of the team in the run up to the World Championships and has given the media plenty to talk about. Jason Queally’s transformation from a Sprint rider to a Sprint-Endurance rider for the Team Pursuit though isn’t as new an idea as many think.
There has certainly been lots of talk about this ‘great new idea’ and how GB have been working on it the last few years and how the Aussies have tried it too. But it is something that Chris Hoy has already tried as he explained by recalling a World Cup back in 1997. “It wasn’t planned and was my first World Cup ever” he says. “I was doing first man in the Team Sprint and I had ridden a few Team Pursuits at the nationals but nothing serious. Rob Hayles had a health scare and was in hospital and they (the team pursuit) only had four riders including Rob. With him out, they were either going to have to withdraw or see if anyone else would be willing to ride.”
“It was the day before the Team Sprint and I was told, if I can do two spells at the front and then bail out, that will be fine. I actually made it to just after three k in the first ride and we qualified fourth. We’d been up against the Germans and as we were on the start line, I could hear the names of the German team being read out, like Jens Lehmann (double Olympic Champion), and I was thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing here’!”
“We got through to the bronze medal ride off though and we were up against the Italians. Two of them had won the World Championship in Manchester (1996) and again, I was hearing these names and it felt quite bizarre. At that time, I was doing a bit more endurance stuff so it wasn’t a big shock but there is definitely, as Jason has shown, a cross over between the endurance based sprinters and the Team Pursuiters”.
Chris however isn’t about to make the switch and join his friend and former sprint partner in the Team Pursuit. This week will see him out to find his feet again in the biggest Track Cycling competition outside of the Olympics which will enable him to see where he is in the grand scheme of things.
After going under 10 seconds in Manchester recently for the flying 200 metres, I think we will see Chris in a pretty good place and even if he doesn’t dominate like he did Beijing, I am certain like he is that there’s more to come in the next two years. Good luck to Sir Chris when his World Championships begin on Monday.
Related Link
British Cycling's World Championships Home page
The 2008 Track Cycling World Championships (Chris Hoy's last Worlds)
