After 25 years of competing as a cyclist, on BMXs, mountain and road bikes, and finally on the track, I would like to think that I have stumbled on some ‘right’ answers; if I have been paying attention then I should have learnt something. Yet at the same time, if I thought I had all the right answers, I’d be screwed. I know that I wouldn’t get near the team for 2012, never mind challenge for a gold medal, if I thought for a second I could just carry on doing the same things.
So the search, the working out of the puzzle, continues. The answers or solutions to some problems remain elusive, while for others the nature of the problem, or challenge, changes; the variables do what the name implies: they vary. I’m getting older, for one thing – I’ll be 36 by the time the London Games come around – and my rivals are getting younger, if only in relation to me. And so I have to go back to the drawing board, come up with new ideas, and then work even harder.
For me, it’s the puzzle and the inherent unpredictability of sport that keeps it fun – and endlessly fascinating. I hope this book can reflect that and, for aspiring athletes and armchair fans alike, prove interesting.
Chris Hoy, Salford, 2009
The Art of Throwing Up in Secret
Beijing, Tuesday 19 August 2008
It was 8.30 when I woke up and hauled myself out of bed. I was lucky, having my own room in the athletes’ village. Jason Kenny, my neighbour in the room next door, had been sharing with Jamie Staff. However, Jamie, whose Olympic Games had started and finished with our gold medal-winning ride in the team sprint the previous Friday, had moved out, so now Jason too had his own space.
It was the final day of the track cycling programme: day five. I had raced on all four days so far, and I could feel it in my legs. First thing in the morning they were stiff and painful, having so far made 14 flat-out efforts in the course of long and draining days at the track.
I could also see the fruits of those efforts, though: two gold medals, from the team sprint and keirin, in the bedside cabinet. I permitted myself the odd sneaky look, though it felt like a bit of a guilty pleasure. I didn’t feel I could – or should – enjoy them until my Games had finished.
That would be today, a day that might even end with a third gold, in the individual sprint. But, bizarrely, there was every chance that my neighbour and team-mate, the aforementioned Jason Kenny, could be the opponent to stand in the way of what, I had been told by journalists a couple of days earlier, would be a historic achievement. No British sportsperson had won three gold medals in a single Olympic Games in a century, I was told. That was news to me: I hadn’t even allowed myself to contemplate the possibility of winning three Olympic titles prior to Beijing, let alone start considering any historical significance. And this morning that was certainly the case: the team sprint and keirin had gone, they were finished. I was focused only on the day’s racing.
The individual sprint starts with a qualifying round – a time trial over 200 metres – and then proceeds over three days with man-against-man contests. Now, two days in, I had made it to the semi-finals. These and the final were both best-of-three rounds, so I would have six more races at most, if I got through my semi and if both rounds went the distance. At 8.30 in the morning, moving my legs slowly and painfully out of bed, then hobbling stiffly towards the shower, I didn’t know how I would cope with that. By bluffing, I imagined.
Though I had my own room, Jason and I shared the apartment, and the shower. Not at the same time, I should clarify. But Jason, being more of a morning person than me – which isn’t saying much – was in there first, and so I waited, then showered, before joining Jason to ride down to the canteen for breakfast.
It’s not as though it was far. It was only a few minutes’ journey, but cyclists abide by a set of absolute golden rules. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie down. And never walk when you can cycle. At this stage of the competition, in particular, it is a case of trying to preserve all the energy and strength you can.
We freewheeled down to the canteen in silence, arriving at the entrance and locking up our bikes. It might be the Olympic athletes’ village, with stricter security than the Pentagon, but you still lock your bike. You can never be too careful – especially with a £3,000 road bike.
Looking back now, this would have been a quite surreal scene: Jason and I heading off to breakfast together, like best mates, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary about the day ahead. It probably helps that Jason must be one of the most relaxed people in the team, if not the sport: nothing seems to faze him, and he is famous for his languid and laidback style (off the track, I should point out: on it, his reactions are a little bit faster).
Both of us knew there was a chance that, just a few hours later, we would race each other for an Olympic gold medal, in arguably the most prestigious of the track cycling events, the sprint. We had qualified first and second in the initial 200m time trial two days ago, and we had both progressed reasonably comfortably to the semi-finals – separate semi-finals, with the German rider Max Levy as Jason’s opponent, and Mickaël Bourgain of France as mine. Beat them and we’d be meeting again a few hours later, in an Olympic final.
But neither of us mentioned any of this. We didn’t talk about racing at all. We just chatted about the usual things, and spent breakfast engaged in the activity that occupies so much of your down time at the Olympics: people watching. This is a particularly entertaining and enjoyable pastime in the athletes’ village, where you get famous names, some extraordinary shapes and sizes, which inspire games of ‘guess the sport.’
Thus did Jason and I pass this very ordinary hour on this most surreal of days, before returning to our apartment, to prepare for the 40-minute bus journey to the Laoshan Velodrome, on the outskirts of Beijing.
First, though, I paid a visit to the British team’s sprint coach, Jan van Eijden. Jan, from Germany, was the world sprint champion in 2000. He retired in 2006 and came to work for us the following year, having been poached from the Eurosport commentary box by our head coach, Shane Sutton, who reckoned Jan had the ingredients to become a top coach. Though he wasn’t the fastest in the world, Jan consistently won head-to-head ‘match’ sprint races. Tactically, I would argue that he is the best sprinter of the last decade. And Shane was right, as he often is (and sometimes isn’t): Jan’s knowledge and experience make him a brilliant tactical coach, and a real asset to the British team. Added to which is the fact that he is very upbeat and virtually always smiling. So he – like the incredible force of nature that is Shane Sutton – is also good for morale.
But this morning I wasn’t going to see Jan to have my morale lifted, or to ask, in the eventuality of us meeting in the final, how I might beat Jason. I knew he wouldn’t discuss Jason’s tactics – and in any case, I wasn’t thinking of Jason … yet. I was thinking of my semi-final opponent, Bourgain.
Before any race, we watch videos of our opponent in action. So Jan got his computer out, and together we watched every sprint race I had ever ridden against Bourgain. We looked for potential weaknesses (his, but also mine). I’d watched all these videos numerous times before. But this, I suppose, was like looking over your notes before an exam. It’s probably not going to make much difference (‘if you don’t know it now, you’ll never know it,’ as the mantra used to go before exams), but, as in the anxious pre-exam wait, you think that you should be doing something. It feels better than doing nothing.
The videos for Beijing were prepared by our performance analysts: there were hours and hours of races on film, over 300 gigabytes’ worth; files and files, comprising a complete library, with every opponent racing and just about every scenario you could imagine. But the analysts’ work goes way beyond just having all this stuff on film. They’ve studied it and worked out things like, ‘If Bourgain is leading with half a lap to go there’s an 80 per cent chance he’ll win the race …’ or ‘When he’s behind