Hoy clicks back into top gear

There were no signs of rustiness when Sir Chris Hoy returned to the track yesterday, racing for the first time in six months at the British track championships in Manchester.

It might sound relatively low key, yet the significance of this meeting extends well beyond the domestic pond. In effect, yesterday set the clock ticking on Hoy’s Olympic campaign. He might as well have struck a gong, or lit a fuse. Save for a training race in Germany in July, the quadruple Olympic gold medallist has been either resting or training since the world championships in March. Yesterday, he moved into a new, crucially important phase.

When the meeting finishes tomorrow there will be exactly 300 days to go before the London Games open. But it is another statistic that is more arresting: Hoy will only race another four times.

It was unusual to see Hoy appear for his first race back, a qualifying heat for the keirin, in his black-and-red Sky Track Cycling outfit, rather than the white jersey with the rainbow bands of world champion – owing to the fact he was second in the keirin, the event he has dominated since 2007, at the worlds in March.

He sat trackside waiting for his qualifying heat as the preceding one witnessed some fairly typical rough and tumble. A spill on the home straight saw one rider crash heavily and collide sickeningly with a photographer. But Hoy didn’t blink. When his race got underway, he took control, riding from the front – as is his wont – to win easily.

That was the first box ticked. As Hoy explains, in late April he sat down and – for the final time, other than in the highly unlikely but not impossible scenario that he decides to keep going until Rio in 2016 – began to draw up a training and racing plan designed to deliver him to the Olympics in peak condition. He reels off the list of races as though they are staging posts – which they are: “The nationals, the European championships, two World Cups, in Kazakhstan and London, the world championships in Melbourne next March, then the Olympics.”

For Hoy, planning is everything. He has spoken before of the importance of the training document; of ripping it up 15 months before Beijing, and tweaking it until he was 100 per cent confident that it was the “blueprint” for success. “It has to be something that really excites you,” he says of the training plan. And he went through a similar process in late April and early May, until he was happy with the final document.

Of the five races, the national championships are the least important. “The importance ramps up as I go through them,” says Hoy, “but it’s a benchmark – as they all are. I’ve been training hard, not tapering off or resting, but I’m happy with where I am. I’ve had almost a perfect build up.”

A fractured rib in May has been the only hiccup. Since then, Hoy has spent many hours in the gym, building a base of strength, adding endurance through longer rides on the road, and “horrible but effective” interval training on a stationery bike at home. Last week he set a personal best for the squat – though he won’t say what it was, for fear that any information could prove beneficial to his rivals. “It’s nice to know that I’m stronger than I’ve ever been,” is all he will say.

The man who won three gold medals at the Beijing Olympics is not daunted by the pressure to emulate that performance in London. Rather, he insists the prospect of the home Games is “not terrifying, but exciting.” Hoy adds: “I like the idea I’m not holding anything back now; that it’s foot to the floor time, we’re within striking distance of the Games. You can sense it in the squad, and see it in the times people are doing.”

While Hoy is positive about his prospects he admits that competition for places – and the new Olympic regulation that will see only one rider per event – will be intense. The team sprint is one event where the permutations are endless, particularly with the incredible return of 41-year old Jason Queally, but Hoy faces challengers such as Jason Kenny in the sprint and keirin. His place in the Olympic team is not guaranteed. Yet he insists that he remains committed to all three events: “Definitely. I believe that if you’re good enough to win one event, you’re good enough to win all three.”