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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.
