Golden boy Chris Hoy gears up for Olympic Games

After his fantastic success in the World Track Cycling Championships, champion is looking forward to Beijing.

WHEN he was a little boy, Chris Hoy would fly around the streets near his parents Roseburn home on his BMX bike, loving the speed, freedom and heart-pumping buzz it gave him.

It probably wasn't that much different to many youngsters' first experiences of cycling. Except for the young Chris, it would be the start of an incredible career that has propelled him to the status of one of Scotland's sporting greats.

The weekend before last, he further sealed his reputation as star of the velodrome when he displayed the physical and mental toughness befitting his Olympian rank and sped to two gold medals and a silver in the World Track Cycling Championships in Manchester.

Those glittering prizes – including becoming the first Briton to win the individual sprint title for 54 years – join an impressive collection of prizes, the most prized of which has to be his Olympic and Commonwealth medals.

Not bad for a boy virtually raised on two wheels, who has put British cycling on the top of the world yet whose home city is edging ever closer to unceremoniously crushing the velodrome where he took his first wobbly sprint rides.

Edinburgh City Council has already decided that the famous sports stadium is to be bulldozed, with around one third of the land sold for development and a new complex built on the remainder of the site – where the velodrome currently stands – for around £25 million.

The council says it will consult cycling groups about the provision of a new training facility to replace the velodrome, but will it be of the standard and quality required to breed cycling Olympic champions of the future?

Hoy, fresh from celebrating his World Track Cycling Championships victories with a solitary glass of bubbly – there's an forthcoming Olympic tournament to think about, after all – doesn't sound convinced.

"Facilities are a big issue for us all, from grass roots to elite level," he says, despondently. "And with Meadowbank being scrapped... well, it's a major concern.

"I started at Meadowbank. If the velodrome hadn't been there, then I probably wouldn't have pursued this sport. You've got to remember it's a specialist sport and if you don't have access to a velodrome then you're going to find it pretty hard to take part."

There's certainly nothing easy about being one of the world's top cyclists: his glittering race career has come at a high personal and physical price. With no world class velodrome facilities in Scotland, Hoy reluctantly had to uproot and make Manchester his home, where he has embarked on a training programme which would bring anyone but a world-class athlete to their knees.

"Yeah, it's a bit painful sometimes," he says with a grin, possibly thinking back to a two-hour bike ride in the driving rain on Christmas Day.

Or maybe freshest in his thoughts was a terrifying crash just eight days before the world championships got under way when, focussing on developing 'top-end speed' in his legs, his rear tyre exploded, spinning him out of control and making him crash. Such spills are par for the course though.

"The training is hard and it can be monotonous too," he admits. "I don't particularly enjoy the physical pain that comes with each session, but I do enjoy the satisfaction that comes afterwards. That's when I can stand back and say 'well, that's another small step towards an overall goal'.

"With everything you endure in each session you are maximising your chances of being successful," he adds.

"It's painful and it's hard work – mid-season it's around 35 hours a week. It's intensive, it's about developing speed and power and I'm lucky that in Manchester there are very good, international standard facilities.

"I'd love to be at home in Edinburgh, but there's no facilities."

Ironically, it was the Meadowbank velodrome – resurfaced to play a key part in the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh – and the remarkable achievements of 'Flying Scotsman' Graeme Obree, that inspired the young Chris Hoy to develop his passion for cycling.

From that seven-year-old boy enjoying a taste of independence on the quiet roads near his parents David and Carol's Roseburn home – he'd explore further at now defunct cycle tracks at Lochend and Danderhall – he had already competed in BMX bike trials when he decided to try put himself to the test with Dunedin Cycling Club.

Road racing, he soon realised, didn't suit his physique, but Friday nights spent training at the open air velodrome, did.

Soon, the George Watson's pupil was choosing cycling over his other sport, rowing.

Later, when he arrived at St Andrews University to study maths and physics, he would be forced to make another choice to accommodate his passion.

"I got a bit of success when I was 18 or 19 and things spiralled from there," he recalls. "I realised I had an aptitude towards it. I went to university thinking I would just pursue a normal career but after the first year I realised that if I was going to make a go in sport, then it was now or never."

He gambled by switching courses to Edinburgh University to study sports science and be closer to Meadowbank for training. Soon he was being eyed up by the British team selectors. The rest is Scottish cycling history.

Since then Hoy has travelled the world, picking up medals, wins and records on the way. Today, he is one of Scotland's finest sportsmen ever, and perhaps one of the nation's most overlooked, too.

"Well, I suppose cycling isn't really like being a footballer," he agrees, without an ounce of regret. "That said, it's been a fantastic sport for me. There aren't many countries I've not cycled in, I've met amazing people and travelled the world. I'd never have gone to Bolivia, Columbia or cycled in Barbados otherwise."

Now 32, he might be considered at the upper age limit for such a demanding sport.

Yet as well as his recent historic haul of two World Championship golds and a silver, he also rewrote the record books by becoming the first Briton to win the world sprint championship since 1954 – cycling's equivalent of beating the world's finest 100 metre runners on the athletics track.

His sprint victory – all the sweeter as its a discipline he's only recently turned his attention to – made him the first track cyclist to complete a career 'grand slam' of medals – the individual sprint, the team sprint, the keirin and the kilometre.

And he's far from done. Hoy, named BBC Scotland's Sports Personality of the Year in 2003, is enjoying a brief respite with his family and fiancee at his city home before serious training begins in Germany for August's Olympic Games in Beijing.

"I still have the motivation – in fact, I'm probably more motivated now than ever before," he says, looking forward to the greatest sporting event in the world and refusing to be drawn into the highly fuelled political debate that surrounds it.

"Afterwards? Well I plan to go to London," he grins, referring to the 2012 games.

"After that, well it'll be just two years to go to Glasgow."

And he's even looking beyond that, adding "If I can keep going for an extra two years, then there's really nothing that I'd like more than to appear at a Commonwealth Games in Scotland."

TRACK RECORD OF WINNING MEDALS
CHRIS HOY won his first medal in the 1999 World Championships in Berlin, when he took silver in the team sprint.

He went on to win a silver in the same discipline at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, adding a gold medal to his collection four years later in the 1km time trial in Athens.

The 1km – known as the 'kilo' – has been scrapped from this year's Olympics, forcing Hoy to retrain for the sprint contest. He confirmed his suitability in that field at the weekend when he scooped the World Championship gold medal for that and the keirin – a two-kilometre mass start race.

He also won silver in the team sprint event.

Since 1999, he has won 12 gold medals, six silver and six bronze.

He was awarded an MBE for services to cycling in 2005.