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Credit: johnthescone (CC License)
There’s a great interview in the Guardian today with British Olympic medal winner Bradley Wiggins, who says that he went on a nine month bender after winning in Athens in 2004:
There were enough moments to drive a self-respecting Olympic champion to drink. In 2004 Wiggins became the first British athlete to win three medals at the same Olympics in 40 years but he and Chris Hoy, who also won gold in Athens, were both ignored at the BBC’s annual Sports Personality shindig. “We were shunted near the back and Chris and me didn’t get a mention the whole evening. They did a 10-minute slot on Red Rum instead. That struck home – we mattered less than a dead horse.”
Thankfully, things are a little better this time around.
Wiggins also confirms that he and Mark Cavendish did have a bit of a falling out after they failed to win the Madison at this year’s Olympics. “I was knackered but he was a bit cocky. Who wouldn’t be when you’re 22, you’ve just won four Tour stages and you’re riding with a double Olympic champion? He thought we’d piss all over it but the reality was different,” he said.
Chris Hoy (right) races Theo Bos in the sprint quarterfinal of the World Cycling Track Championships 2008 at the Manchester Velodrome (Credit: johnthescone, CC License)
I recently reviewed Richard Moore’s Heroes, Villains & Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britain’s Track Cycling Revolution in the Sunday Business Post:
For Ireland’s minuscule track cycling community, Manchester is seen as something of a Mecca.
While the only velodrome in Ireland is a dilapidated outdoor concrete track in Dublin, the home of British track cycling is a vast indoor arena, the centrepiece of which is a track, built with Siberian pine, that has already facilitated 15 world records.
Manchester played host to the World Championships for the third time this year and the British team accounted for half the gold medals on offer. A similar haul will come as no surprise at this year’s Olympics in Beijing.
But it wasn’t always this way. Up until the late 1990s, British cycling was in the doldrums. Severely underfunded and riven by infighting at an administrative level, its only successes came from rare maverick talents such as Graham Obree and Chris Boardman.
Heroes, Villains & Velodromes is ostensibly the story of the team’s biggest star, Chris Hoy. However, Hoy’s success is bound up with the renaissance of British track cycling and the system built to support him.
You can read the rest here.
