AFTER YEARS of waiting, he was hoping for two golds in two days, but Chris Hoy was to find out yesterday that medals do not come along like buses. It is probably best not to mention buses in Hoy’s company, anyway, after one indirectly caused him to fall off his training bike in the Olympic village last week. His gold in the 1km time trial on Friday might easily never have happened.
Approaching a roundabout on what was meant to be a gentle warmdown cycle, Hoy was unsure who had right of way, sensed the bus wasn’t going to stop regardless, so accelerated to get in front of it. A costly mistake, but nothing like as expensive as it might have been.
“I went a bit faster than I should have done and suddenly the tarmac was like glass,” says Hoy. “I lost traction and hit the deck pretty hard. For a split second I felt a burning sensation and did a quick medical check. Collarbone? Right. Wrist? That’s okay. A thousand things went through my mind, but, thankfully, there was no major damage. Most of it’s superficial: just lost skin. My hip is the worst graze, but it hasn’t affected the movement in my legs. It’s more embarrassment than anything else.”
Hoy was a BMX rider in his youth, but at 14 he quit the sport because he wasn’t good enough. He turned to mountain biking and concluded the same. In track cycling the same problem has not applied. Not only is he good enough, he just keeps getting better. In Sydney in 2000, Hoy joined Craig MacLean and Jason Queally to claim silver in the team sprint; afterwards, he decided to make his own name. Victory over Queally at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in the kilo time trial was the first indication he had found his own voice. Two World Championships have followed since then.
Hoy has had only one temporary relapse when, as a first-year student at St Andrews University, he entered a new social circle that no longer squared with cycling. A diet of pies, pizzas and pints saw him lose his shape. After a break of several months, he tried to ride a bike again and realised how unfit he was. It was decision time.
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The right advice came from MacLean, who encouraged Hoy to switch to a sports science degree at Moray House College in Edinburgh, and train with him at Meadowbank before a later relocation to Manchester. Hoy had a glimpse of the easy way out and ignored it.
Such is the strength of British track cycling that Queally, who won gold in Sydney, was not only unable to qualify to defend his title in Athens, but was also unable to force his way into yesterday’s sprint team until the first round. Without him, however, Hoy is convinced he would not be here himself.
Hoy watched from the stands in 2000 when Queally claimed gold in an Olympic record of 1:01.609 that he bettered to 1:00.711.
“At the time of the Sydney Games a lot of people were suggesting you couldn’t win Olympic gold medals without taking drugs, but I knew that Jason was clean,” says Hoy. “After that I didn’t care what anyone said — even if every other athlete in the history of sport had taken drugs, he hadn’t so I knew it was possible to do it myself.
“It was quite emotional. I just thought, ‘Jason’s immortalised now; whatever he does he’ll always be an Olympic champion’.” Now Hoy can say the same for himself.