CYCLING TRACK: IAN O'RIORDAN could feel the heat rising in the cycling cauldron as Britain's men and women went for gold
THE OBVIOUS danger in using so much wood in the Olympic Velodrome, heating it up like a furnace, then staging some fireworks on the track is that the whole thing goes up – first in smoke, then a blaze of glory.
It seemed, for a while, none of us would get out of here alive, or at least with a dry shirt. When, in the end, Chris Hoy came riding past, a knight in shining armour, waving a British flag over his head for the fifth time in his Olympic career, the temperature was a virtually unbearable white hot.
Team finals evening, the first two medal races in Olympic track cycling, and whoever organised the tickets should also be investigated, the 6,000 sell-out crowd truly, madly partisan, in the best sense of the word, taking every opportunity to make that loud and clear.
When, about halfway through, the British women’s pair of Victoria Pendleton and Jess Varnish were “relegated” from a place in their two-lap final, breaking what effectively is cycling’s off-side rule, the place erupted in booing and hissing, and it seemed some of it might even be coming from the VIP seats, where the Royal Princes were holding court with David Cameron.
That was only the start of it. The gold medal race endured a similar fate when the Chinese women won gold, beating the Germans, but minutes later were also deemed to have been off-side: the first rider, who leads the opening lap, can’t be passed by the second rider until the first lap is completed, which is what the British and Chinese pair were guilty of, albeit marginally.
It’s impossible to tell when they’re travelling at such breakneck speed, having gone from 0-60km per hour in about 10 seconds – but once the track commissar makes a decision that’s final, and there’s no appeal.
Pendleton and Varnish had broken the world record in qualifying, clocking 32.526 seconds, and with the Chinese later bettering that, their final showdown would have been fascinating.
“We have never really had an illegal change before, so it wasn’t something we’d been too concerned about,” mused Pendleton after missing a second Olympic gold medal, and possibly not aware she was the cover girl of our Olympic Programme Day 6, which hasn’t been proving the luckiest omen.
“But it was an illegal change. I came through in the change zone about a metre too early. We are talking about one hundredth of a second of a mistake there. Jess moved up a fraction too early and I just saw the door and went for it, because that’s my cue to try to squeeze underneath her as quickly as possible.
“But it happens. It’s not Jess’s fault or my fault. We are both partly to blame. We were probably a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing and a bit too eager. It’s just one of those things. Now and again rubbish things happen and it is one of those days.”
Gong Jinjie and Guo Shuang weren’t quite as agreeable – with Gong leaving the arena when informed China weren’t the gold medallists after all, and had to be coaxed back for the medal ceremony.
So, against that backdrop, there really wasn’t any way the British men could lose: this time the trio of Hoy, Jason Kenny and 19 year-old Philip Hindes, racing three laps, made no mistake, defending the title won in Beijing in a new world record of 42.60 seconds – bettering the 42.74 they’d set in the first round.
At 36, it takes Hoy’s gold medal tally to five, matching Steve Redgrave’s British record, having won three in Beijing four years ago, plus gold in Athens in 2004.
“It’s quite overwhelming,” said Hoy, who carried their flag in the Opening Ceremony. Not bad for a nation either that until recently didn’t even appear to value cycling lanes.
Hoy put much of it down to home support: “There’s immense pride to do it here in the UK, in front of a home crowd. It’s phenomenal. Bradley said to me, after he won the time trial yesterday, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, just enjoy it and go for it, and we did.
“We knew it was possible, we knew if we put together the best possible race, it could be done. We timed it perfectly and we nailed it. I dug deeper than I have ever before, I didn’t want to let the guys down.”
Pendleton’s disappointment is somewhat tempered by the fact she has two events left, the individual sprint and keirin, although just as well for her the British men came through, or someone might actually have been tempted to burn the place down.
Hindes, the German-born son of a British soldier, gave them the perfect start, and Kenny suggested the women’s defeat was an extra spur: “It was devastating to see what happened to the girls, after that we wanted to keep everything really tight. I can’t believe how quick we have gone today, unbelievable.”
Unbelievable, indeed, and already boiling over nicely to be the hottest Olympic venue in London.
Hoy is back in the Velodrome next Tuesday to get the chance to surpass Redgrave’s five golds, when he competes in the keirin, although he won’t get the chance to surpass Wiggins as Britain’s most decorated Olympian, having been overlooked for the individual sprint in favour of Kenny. The place would almost certainly explode if Hoy won that too.
