Race for Olympics is sprint not marathon

Published on Wednesday 1 February 2012 02:48

Britain’s two world leaders in track cycling, Sir Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny, are battling each other in a contest which could have a big impact on the host nation’s Olympic success this summer.

The pair must work together to find a winning formula in the team sprint but compete against each other for the single place available in the individual event.

Hoy is a four-time Olympic champion. Three of those titles were earned in Beijing four years ago, one in the keirin and one in the team sprint after Kenny’s late addition to the three-man squad transformed a silver at the World Championships into Olympic gold. Another came in the individual sprint where the Scot and Kenny, from Bolton, were by far the best riders on the track. They met in the final and Hoy, just, was the best of British.

In London, new rules allow only one entry from each country. So, if Kenny is picked, Hoy will miss out on the chance to defend one of his titles.

Hoy said: “It’s not about choosing to do all three, it’s about earning your spot. I’ll race the best I can at the World Championships and, if I earn the right to do all three, then I’ll be delighted and I’ll race them at the Olympics but there is no sure thing.”

Kenny was promoted to world champion in the individual sprint earlier this year after the man who beat him, France’s Gregory Bauge, was stripped of his 2011 titles following a doping offence. But the 23-year-old shrugs off the suggestion this puts him in a better position than Hoy, 35, from Edinburgh.

“It’s a bit bizarre but it doesn’t really change much,” said Kenny. “We’re so far into our preparations for this year’s worlds now and everyone is so focused on looking forwards, it’s kind of ‘what’s done is done’.”

Hoy and Kenny make a contrating pair – the Scot is among the country’s highest-profile sportsmen, while Kenny is arguably Britain’s lowest-profile world and Olympic champion.

At last weekend’s Revolution track meeting, the media waited in a gaggle for Hoy, while Kenny went about his work mostly untroubled. And that suits the younger man nicely.

“It’s good for me because he soaks up all the media attention and he copes with it really well,” Kenny said. “It means we can keep our head down.”

But Kenny has the double pressure of trying to best Hoy and, if he succeeds, making sure the Olympic title stays in British hands. “The good thing with training with Chris is you’re training against someone who is consistently one of the very best in the world,” Kenny added. “On any day of the week he’d probably be top five, if not top three against anyone.”

Choosing the best man for the individual event looks relatively straightforward next to the challenge of finding the third rider for the team sprint after the retirement of Jamie Staff, the third part of the Olympic gold-winning combination.

France and Germany have pushed the British into second or third place at each World Championships since Beijing but Hoy pointed to Kenny’s emergence a few weeks before the Olympic training camp four years ago.

“He only just pipped Jason Queally and Craig MacLean and then he just seemed to be making these amazing improvements day by day,” Hoy said “At the Olympics, he was setting the fastest time in the world for the second lap in the team sprint.”

First up for Hoy and Kenny is the London leg of the World Cup series in February, which will be the first event held in the new velodrome in Stratford, and then March’s World Championships in Melbourne.

Hoy added: “We’re far from worried about the team sprint because all we can do is train the best we can.

“Once we back off and freshen up for Melbourne, we’ll get a decent benchmark. I’m not saying we’re going to win it, but it’s not out of the question. That will be our benchmark.”

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