The change was simply put by Keen back then: “We will be going from a situation where riders have been getting the occasional tyre and jersey – where there was no direct funding of the athlete and limited national team funding – to a budget of £30,000 to £40,000 a year for every rider on the programme.” There have been warm-weather training camps during the British winter, full international racing programmes for the first time. Unprecedentedly in British cycling teams, everyone rides the same bike.
Overnight, across British cycling, the catch phrase among top performers went from “getting international selection” to “getting on the plan”: those who met Keen’s performance targets – such as Queally, and his fellow medallists Chris Hoy and Craig MacLean – were turned overnight into full-time athletes and, by happy coincidence, a world-class training venue was available: the velodrome built for Manchester’s abortive Olympic bid.
The velodrome was where Queally first caught the cycling bug. It is, says Keen, the envy of major cycling nations such as Australia and France, which do not have an indoor facility and train outdoors, subject to the weather.
An entire infrastructure has been put in place. At the end of 1997 there were three full-time staff dealing with the competition side of British cycling. Now there are 34. Famously, earlier this year Keen was attacked for “having more coaches than Wallace Arnold” by one of Britain’s best ex-professionals, Sid Barras. For all that Keen has, for example, a fan in the sports minister Kate Hoey, there have been frequent grass-roots rumblings about how the money is targeted.
Since he abandoned the union flag on the British team strip at the start of his reign, to break decisively with the past, Keen’s single-mindedness has mystified most of Britain’s amateur cyclists and British cycling’s “blazers”.
This weekend Keen must finally have made them lose their doubts but he has only just begun. “We are just at the starting line,” he said yesterday. “In years to come there may be a whole raft of young riders coming in to contest all 18 gold medals across the board.”
This was one of the first pieces in any British paper to explain what Keen and his backup team were trying to achieve and how they were going about it; it was written as Britain’s cyclists surprised everyone – particularly the British media – by taking gold in the kilometre (Jason Queally), silver in the team sprint (Queally, MacLean, Hoy), bronze in the women’s pursuit (McGregor) and bronze in the team pursuit (Wiggins, Manning.) The final quote sums up where Keen felt he could take cycling: his vision has been realised, and more.
Queally buckles up to take the pain with the fame
25 October 2000
As Jason Queally clicks his back wheel into the start gate on the Manchester velodrome this evening and attempts to add the one-kilometre time-trial world championship to his Olympic title before his home crowd, he will be hoping that history does not repeat itself.
At the same venue four years ago, when Queally was competing in his first world championship as a complete unknown – it was his first year of track racing – his foot parted company with his pedal as he started the Olympic sprint. He and his team-mates Chris Hoy and Craig MacLean were unable to continue.
It was a farcical episode purely due to Queally’s inexperience – he used shoe fixings which were inadequate for the sheer power he can transmit to the pedals – but with hindsight it underlines the dramatic extent of his progress: from novice to shock Olympic gold medallist in four years.
Not surprisingly the 30-year-old from Chorley is a little overwhelmed by it all. “I went to Sydney as Mr Anonymous and came back as someone the general public has been exposed to.” He is noticed in the street and gets to disagree with Sue Barker over which German pursuiter is pictured on the BBC’s Question of Sport.
The transition has, inevitably, affected his readiness for tonight, when he will come up against the reigning world champion Arnaud Tournant, a colossus from the plains of northern France. Tournant was shocked by his defeat in Sydney, which he described as “on the limit of the supernatural”, and believes Queally will be his principal adversary for the title in the future.
“I’ve known about him since the world championship in Bordeaux in 1998. He was eighth and no one paid him the slightest attention, but he finished fifth last year [in Berlin], so we should have known about him,” says Tournant. “I know very well who he is now, though.”
Fame has its price; Queally has missed valuable training since Sydney due to the welter of television appearances. “I just hope the crowd lift me. I remember how it was in 1996; the atmosphere was incredible.”
As Queally circles the empty velodrome at Manchester there is a curious rumbling – hollow carbon fibre wheel on hollow wooden banking. The speed cranks up lap by lap as he trains until he is whizzing past at 40mph, head twisted slightly to one side, the faintest hint of the pressure showing through his shoulders. It takes a long time to recover from this single effort, leaning against the rails.
The kilometre is cycling’s most concentrated test of pure, unadulterated power and speed. For the minute he is racing, at more than 35mph from his standing start, Queally puts out an average of about 1,000 watts of power, peaking at 2,000 watts. That is five times what it takes the “average” Tour de France star to climb l’Alpe d’Huez, although that lasts 40 minutes.
The pain may not last as long but Queally has been left writhing on the floor by the trackside for half an hour after a bad “kilo”. “You have to train your body to cope with it but bizarrely, the fitter you get, the more you can hurt yourself.”
But the potential for gain amid the pain is somewhat limited. Whereas Britain’s only other recent Olympic champion, Chris Boardman, turned his individual pursuit skill into a lucrative career in the Tour de France – a career which will be brought to an end on Friday on the velodrome – that option is not open to a kilometrist, especially one who is the wrong side of 30.
Apart from product endorsements – and this front has been quiet, Queally says – there are two opportunities open to him on two wheels: exhibition sprint events during the circuit of winter track meetings across Europe and the eight-week season of keirin races on the Japanese velodromes. A vast betting industry is based around these events, where six or eight riders are paced by a motorbike before sprinting for the finish, and a place is worth about £100,000.
Beforehand, though, Queally will have to conquer his fear of riding in a bunch of other cyclists on the track. His qualms are understandable in the light of his last outing in company on the boards: a Frankensteinian scar stretches from his left armpit to the small of his back where a lengthy splinter of the Meadowbank velodrome in Edinburgh was removed in 1996. “It’s a mental thing and I’ll have to get over it.”
There has been much to cope with in the post-Olympic weeks. Strangest of all, he says, was receiving fan mail – from Germany, Finland, Sweden. In what may be a first for a British cyclist, he was sent a pair of black ladies’ knickers through the post. “The lads swear it wasn’t them, although they weren’t an expensive pair, a g-string. They came with a note saying, ‘I’ve been watching your progress in Sydney and look forward to meeting you in Manchester.’”
The note, rather than the lingerie, pretty much sums up the reaction of British cycling fans. They will fill the velodrome tonight to watch their new hero and cheer him to the echo. He does not seem fazed, however, and is keeping his feet on the ground – and, he hopes, securely clipped into his pedals.
This piece, like the one before it, comes at the point where the track cyclists began to enter the British sports mainstream: as with the McGregor piece earlier on, the intricacies of track cycling had to be explained in some depth because the sport was so obscure. That world championships in Manchester was a resounding success. Queally’s role in the run of British medals since Sydney is one that has rarely been recognised.
Boardman suffers blood, sweat and tears for his finest hour
28 October 2000
It is, Ch
ris Boardman said yesterday, “amazing how long an hour can last”. The final, and perhaps the most emotional, 60 minutes of Boardman’s professional career must have taken time, and pain, into a new dimension as he set a new one-hour record distance by a mere 10 metres at the Manchester velodrome.
Aiming to overtake the 49.431km set in 1972 in Mexico by the great Eddy Merckx, Boardman was comfortably ahead of schedule at half-distance but weakened to slip behind the Belgian’s pace with 11 minutes left. An all-out sprint in the final few minutes, with every spectator on his feet yelling himself hoarse, brought him the record on the last lap.
One man riding round a track on his own it might have been, but it was high drama. Like Merckx 28 years before, Boardman had to be lifted off his bike and an hour afterwards he was still unable to sit down. “I have never been in this much pain in my life,” he said.
“For half an hour it looked pretty good, then I started dropping back, but I was still on the limit. I was hoping that I would lose just enough to get it back if it came down to a sprint.
“I started sprinting with three minutes left. I had no idea if I would pass the distance. I just wanted it to end. It was most unpleasant for a couple of minutes, which felt like a couple of years.”
Boardman’s place in cycling will be indelibly linked with the hour, so this was an appropriate way to close, in front of his home crowd. The first record, 52.713km at Bordeaux in 1993 on the day the Tour de France passed through, was deliberately timed to gain maximum attention, and earned him a professional contract. His second, 56.375km on this track four years ago, will remain a high point to rank with his first yellow jersey in the Tour.
Both his previous distances have, however, been sidelined in a bizarre, Canute-like attempt on the part of the governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, to rewrite history and halt technological progress in cycling. Boardman’s distance will in future be known as the Athlete’s Hour Record. The key part of the name is the first word: it is vital, in the eyes of the men who run cycling, to distinguish future records from those of the past, where they feel an unhealthy amount of attention was paid to the bike rather than to the athlete sitting on it.
So Boardman had to ride on a machine based on that used by Merckx, which the UCI regards as the benchmark, with no modern aerodynamic equipment. Whatever the bike, the athletic effort necessary to ride “on the limit” for 60 minutes has applied to every cyclist who has ever attempted what has always been viewed as the sport’s Blue Riband: the fastest a man can go unpaced using the technological aids of the day. And, ironically, there was much talk about the bike yesterday.
The BBC spent many minutes with Boardman’s management attempting to understand the details, while cycling’s Murray Walker, the veteran broadcaster David Duffield, who has consistently opposed the UCI’s attempts to turn back the clock, walked out of the velodrome as Boardman appeared, refusing to commentate on the event for Eurosport.
Whatever the niceties of equipment rules, it was a glorious, if nailbiting, end for the Wirral racer. “What kept me going was the fact that it was the last thing I was doing,” he said. “I’m glad I was able to make people walk away happy. It was a privilege.”
There were hugs and tears afterwards, and among those who threw their arms round Boardman’s neck was Yvonne McGregor, who has had advice and support from him through her career, and who today will improve on the bronze she achieved in Sydney in the women’s individual pursuit. She qualified fastest yesterday, ahead of the defending champion Marion Clignet of France, then came smoothly through her quarter-final against the Russian Lada Kozlikova to guarantee herself at least silver.
Boardman went on to work for the World Class Performance Plan under Dave Brailsford; prior to the Athens Games his job included mentoring Bradley Wiggins and in the run-up to Beijing he was one of four senior managers supervising the team, while up to 2012 he was the team’s head of research and development, heading up their squad of boffins. He quit the team after the London Games to devote his attention to his cycle company and work as a commentator for the BBC and ITV. This was a historic moment in another way: the last high-profile attempt on the hour record, which has lost all credibility and meaning due to the UCI’s changes.
Sport in brief – Cycling
2 April 2001
Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, an Olympic and world championship bronze medallist on the track last year, scored the biggest road victory of his career yesterday in the five-day Tour of Majorca. The 20-year-old defended the overall lead throughout the race after winning the first two stages.
No need to underline the significance of this one: a first major stage race win by Bradley Wiggins. We gave it 45 words. But at least we got it in the paper.
Enduring challenge of “the Hill”
14 April 2001
There are places and times when past, present and future seem to merge seamlessly. Yesterday, at this venerable venue [Herne Hill], was one. On July 22–23, 1892, proclaims a plaque in the grandstand, “the first 24-hours cycle path race for the Coca-Cola Challenge Cup” was “promoted here by the London Cycling & Athletic Club”.
Anyone trying to race on a cycle path these days is liable to be arrested but yesterday at the Good Friday meeting – first promoted by the Southern Counties Cycling Union in 1903 – the current generation of British track Olympians and, perhaps, some of the next, were riding in the wheelmarks not only of the Victorian pioneers and of the competitors in the 1948 London games but of later legends.
When Reg Harris, Tom Simpson, Jacques Anquetil and Fausto Coppi were brought here in the heyday of “the Hill”, they drew so many fans that bikes had to be neatly stacked dozens deep outside. Chances to see Britain’s Olympic cycling medallists are rare but yesterday the shallow bankings of the 500m concrete bowl were lined rather than packed to watch the men of Sydney. Riders such as Bradley Wiggins, Bryan Steel and Chris Hoy took on locals from outfits such as the exotically named Team Blazing Saddles, plus a smattering of specially flown-in foreigners.
The wafer-thin Wiggins, fresh from his victory in the Tour of Majorca, was clearly the strongest in the pursuit, in a sadistic variant unique to “the Hill”, where six riders – rather than the usual two – start at set intervals and “pursue” each other for 10 minutes rather than the usual four.
Trailing in his wake was a minor legend: Sean Yates, perhaps the most popular British cyclist since Simpson, the veteran of a dozen Tours de France, until January manager of the ill-fated Linda McCartney racing team and now racing as an amateur in between work as a builder.
Yates was not the only throwback. This is the only British venue where racing takes place using “the big motors” – customised, full-sized motorbikes behind which a cyclist can draft at up to 50mph.
Steel was the only Olympian to brave these behemoths, driven by Hell’s Angel lookalikes sporting battered black leathers, mirror sunglasses and a variety of bizarre facial hair. The drivers sit bolt upright, as if on the lavatory, to give maximum shelter to their charges, themselves on bikes with tiny front wheels and reversed forks in order to get as near as possible to the pacer.
Steel led for much of the 40 laps, covered at well over 40mph, overtaking a local hero, the motor-mouthed Eurosport commentator Russell Williams, but he was outpaced by the German Marko Ulbricht, spinning as dizzily as a hamster on a wheel as he swooped off the banking to overtake.
The motors are firmly of the past, no longer included in major championships, but a glimpse of the future came in the White Hope sprint, held since 1948 for riders under 18. This year it went to the junior David Heald, tipped for a place in next year’s Commonwealth Games.
The future of “the Hill” is less certain, for all that it is the only venue in London for those out to emulate Wiggins. Its lease, currently held by Southwark Council, is up at the end of the year, and, ironically given cycling’s glut of Olympic and world championships medals last year, there is doubt over its funding.
Getting
the Good Friday Meeting into the Guardian was satisfying, given its tradition. It’s amusing to speculate how big a crowd Hoy and Wiggins would draw today – if the Meeting was lucky enough to hit a dry day. Bryan Steel was a mainstay of the team pursuit squad in the early years, and retired after Athens. I have no idea what became of the “White Hope” winner David Heald.
Wiggins finds solace in new pro deal
27 September 2001
Bradley Wiggins, Britain’s finest up and coming cyclist, was unable to overcome a broken wrist yesterday and qualify for today’s individual pursuit final [in Antwerp], but at least he could console himself with achieving a longer-term aim: a place on a top European professional team.
The music for the opening ceremony had included the theme from Mission Impossible, and that summed up the task facing the west Londoner last night. After qualifying seventh out of eight in the morning for the semi-finals, Wiggins was eliminated yesterday evening by the German veteran Jens Lehmann, last year’s champion.
[Lehmann was, coincidentally, the rider lapped by Chris Boardman in the final of the individual pursuit in Barcelona in 1992 – the German was that old.]
It was a bitter end for the 1998 junior world champion, who raced with a plaster cast on his wrist and specially modified handlebars. Lehmann, who won the silver medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics behind Chris Boardman, started faster and caught Wiggins after less than three of the four kilometres.
“It was quite painful because the pins in my wrist are coming up through the skin and the plaster cast presses on them,” Wiggins said. “I missed a vital part of my final preparation, and I never got my best ride out in qualifying, but I’m still close to the best guys. It’s definitely there for the future.”
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