Heroes, Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britain's Track Cycling Revolution (Hardcover)

An absolutely amazing thing happened earlier this year. Britain's track cycling team totally wiped the floor with the very best that is everywhere that is not this traffic-congested island. More importantly, this occurred at the World Championships. Out of the eighteen possible gold medals, our little nation claimed nine.

Just imagine any world championship, anywhere, in any sport, where every second national anthem that is played is our own.

It wasn't always thus. In fact, I can recall a time when any medal, just one of any colour, would be enough to stifle the sense of failure yet again, and justify the 'hope syndrome' - that if we carry on as we are we will exponentially improve. Thankfully, this hope syndrome was ended by the gutter point that both financially and politically so nearly destroyed the entire British cycling establishment in 1997, but which ultimately, and after much rancour and recrimination, allowed the sport to re-invent itself and start again from scratch, with the help of lottery millions.

Chris Hoy won two of those nine medals earlier this year - so excuse me for earlier eulogising about the number of God Save the Queens that were played. This British team has more than its fair share of Scots, and, like myself, Chris is proud to be both Scottish and British.

Let me be clear and yet vague that Richard Moore's book, Heroes, Villains & Velodromes, both is and isn't about Chris Hoy, as such. Craig MacLean features heavily. He was there in the dark days, as was I, but he carried on through the revolution that took place and indeed he, along with Chris, has played an integral part in that transformation.

Just how dark and precipitous these days were I was not actually fully aware until I read this book. Other heroes of the day such as Doug Dailey, the national coach at the time, and Peter Keen, formerly personal coach to Chris Boardman, also played a huge role in the new order, and their contributions are explored in depth.

To be fair, the mid-1990s was a time of darkness in cycling at world level, simply because the drug abuse issue came to a head and was splashed across the front pages of the world media. There was, and still is, a drug culture in professional road cycling at world level - and unfortunately, although this problem is confined mainly to road cycling, the entirety of cycling, including track disciplines, are tarred by it.

The distinction is made clear in this book and somehow Richard has managed to get our heroes of the day, Chris Hoy included, to talk openly about the effect this scourge has had on them as riders. Richard, himself a former Commonwealth Games rider, has lost all vestiges of naivety, and he talks about the pre-reformation days openly, almost to the point of actionability.

The new order of British cycling will tolerate none of it - I mean in terms of that doping culture - even though their successes have received a nudge-nudge wink-wink response from many quarters.

Chris Hoy talks about how he feels that weight of suspicion every time he stands on top of the podium. And he is no stranger to it since he has already amassed nine - yes, nine - world titles, as well as winning the Olympic gold in Athens in spectacular style.

This is very much a multi-faceted book where he, along with Craig MacLean and others, form a thread that tells an amazing story of transformation, possibly never seen on such a scale in any other sport ever.

Despite this, the book is ultimately about Chris Hoy, the person and the athlete. When I opened the book my natural fear was that this might be one of those all-too-common chronological ego-trips that sports biographies can be. Not a bit of it. Chris is hard working, consistently dedicated, and very successful, but he hasn't melted down in public, or thrown a wobbly, which only enhanced my initial fear.

I have known Chris Hoy and Craig MacLean for fifteen years and I can say that they are genuinely nice guys. I shared a room with Chris for three weeks at the world championships in Perth in 1997 - you really get to know someone in that time, and he was as he is now: unassuming and modest.

But the niceness is what I could never quite understand about Chris and Craig. With burly, elbow-to-elbow sprinter types, niceness just doesn't do, and in the world of sprinters, I witnessed clenched fork-laden fists mutually pointing at eyeballs over dinner. Yet there is not an inkling of this temperament in either Chris or Craig.

I have been asked so many times what makes a champion a champion - what makes someone a champion and not others who are equally as talented. Richard's book reassures me in many ways that I am not alone in being at the sharp end of a psychological spectrum. It is, after all, our personality that makes us what we need to be to satisfy our individual needs.

Chris Hoy and others have had anything but a gravy train ride to become what they are now. Chris was not an instant natural success and he has had to endure a lot of hardships and setbacks on the road to making himself what he is. Seemingly confident, self-assured winners are quite often anything but, and they are winners in spite of it, yet at the same time also because of it.

Richard has cleverly used the very cogent words of others to paint a picture of real characters within a new order, in which even a psychiatrist is employed. British cycling has changed so much from the dark days. I remember being sent off in 1995 - a year that would culminate in me becoming world champion - to World Cups in Australia and Japan on my own with a bike bag and some tools.

Now a team of about eighteen riders has a support crew of twenty-eight; now people expect success within the team. Indeed, within the team there's a critical mass of positivity, one that I could never have imagined in my time.

This is an absolutely must-read book that tells a story that had to be told; it is the story of a new era that fills me with excitement with the approach of the Beijing showdown.

Oh, if only I was ten years younger!

Graeme Obree - The Scotsman

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