Rio Crisis? What crisis. Amid a blur of gold medals, beaming smiles, broken records and hi-tech spinning wheels, in a humid and hectic velodrome Britain’s men’s sprint team blew away the opposition in a manner that justified the quiet confidence of their coaches and astounded bookmakers who had them down as 14-1 shots.
Callum Skinner was 12 years old when Chris Hoy won gold in Athens in 2004 and he was inspired to follow in his footsteps. Twelve years later Skinner was slumped on the boards of the velodrome having replaced his one time hero and played a crucial role in blowing away the cobwebs of a dreadful funk of a year for British cycling.
In the understated words of Hoy the last four years have been “a bit of a disaster”. He was talking specifically about this event, as British Cycling struggled so hard to replace him amid a string of failures at world level, but he could have been speaking more widely about the travails of a unit so used to unbroken praise.
This felt more than just another medal. This was a triumph against the odds, a fourth gold medal for Jason Kenny and second for Philip Hindes, and it may have wider connotations.
At one stage there were serious concerns over whether this colourful venue would ever be finished in time amid tales of bankrupt contractors and cancelled test events. In typical Brazilian fashion it came together when it most mattered. Britain’s cyclists did the same.
Kenny, perhaps the lowest profile athlete ever to win four golds, will surely add to that tally now they have what US election candidates call “the big mo”. Amid an atmosphere of raucous encouragement from the large British contingent in a hothouse of an atmosphere, they more than put down a marker – their skin-suit clad cyclists delivered a serious statement of intent.
The team sprint trio’s qualifying round, in which they smashed the Olympic record, was like an exhalation for a group of athletes and a governing body coiled tight like springs.
Those close to those athletes who kept insisting they would deliver when it mattered, whatever crises swirled above their heads, were proved right.
Earlier the women’s team pursuit train – Katie Archibald, Laura Trott, Elinor Barker and Joanna Rowsell-Shand – smoothly smashed the world record in qualifying. The men – Ed Clancey, Steven Burke, Owain Doull and Bradley Wiggins, chasing that eighth medal that would make him Britain’s most decorated Olympian – almost followed suit.If some lumpiness between Olympics is expected and even encouraged, with British Cycling having mastered the art of peaking at the right time, this was taking things to the extreme.
The breadth and range of the problems that have assailed those overseeing the sport since the glories of London has been as unexpected as they have been extraordinary. And yet through it all, the system has delivered these athletes to Rio in the shape of their lives.
If Super Saturday is remembered by many as the defining day of London 2012, then the sleek velodrome was the whirring engine and beating heart of Team GB’s record-breaking success.
Four years on the well-honed machine went to Rio showing signs of wear and tear, on the track and off, even as UK Sport continues to rely on the sport for more than its fair share of success. In both Beijing 2008 and London 2012, on the road and on the track, Britain’s cyclists set the tone for what was to follow. At both there was heartening success on the road followed by era‑defining performances on the track that begat the high-performance template copied to such great effect across other sports. When the endless praise showered on British Cycling all of a sudden turned to opprobrium, the effect was jarring.
Most obviously, and seriously, the ramifications of the Shane Sutton affair continue to linger. Sutton – who took over from Sir Dave Brailsford in a move that unbalanced the operation – was meant to be here. Instead he is at home awaiting the conclusions of an independent review into allegations of bullying, sexism and discrimination that brought his 14-year, medal-laden career at British Cycling to a close. He expects to be “totally exonerated” but the affair has cast an undoubted pall.
Ian Drake, the British Cycling chief executive, is also at home in Derbyshire, watching on television and desperately hoping that the tumult of the past six months of chaos in the boardroom will not impact on performance.
Things have not got any easier since the team arrived, with the pressure cranked up further. The Lizzie Armitstead-missed-tests affair left plenty of unanswered questions. The men’s road race ended in disappointment. The decision to bring back Emma Pooley to contest the women’s time trial foundered in the drizzle of Pontal. And an exhausted Chris Froome would have hoped for a different colour medal round his neck.
Meanwhile the two biggest personalities in the British cycling team had one of their irregular spats.
Wiggins was accused by Mark Cavendish of freezing him out of the men’s team pursuit line up. Those who have seen Wiggins in training with Clancey, Burke and Doull say the decision was an obvious one.
Cavendish said with a glint that Wiggins had been “super-stressed” and “wants to be the hero”. That spat might have been put down to pre‑Games tension between two long-time quarrelsome brothers in arms had it not come on top of everything else.
And yet, if there is one thing that has characterised British cycling over the past decade it is the ability to put all else aside and focus on performance when it matters most. Results at the world championships in London in March did not augur well, but history shows that is no accurate guide.
There are more of those fabled marginal gains – new bikes, new skin-suits – and a public insistence that everything will be all right on the night. And at the end of it there were Hindes, Kenny and Skinner, gold medals round their necks. “We look to focus on process and outcome takes of itself,” the interim performance director Andy Harrison said before the race. So it did. And how.
