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Owen Slot is chief sports reporter on The Times. He has three times been named Sports Feature Writer of the Year and three times Sports News Reporter of the Year.
These medallists show how much Olympic cycling has changed over the years.
FREDERICK KEEPING
He competed in the first Olympic Games of the modern era, in Athens in 1896. His event was the twelve-hour race, which was thoroughly tedious as it involved going round and round an outdoor velodrome. Six riders started the race and it was so gruelling that four dropped out and, when the other two finished, their legs were swollen and they were both weeping from the pain. Keeping finished one lap behind the winner, Adolf Schmal of Austria. The twelve-hour race was never held in an Olympics again.
JOHN MATTHEWS AND ARTHUR RUSHEN
They won gold in the 2,000m tandem race in the Athens Games of 1906. Tandem racing – two on the same bike – remained in the Olympic programme until 1972.
TEAM PURSUIT TEAM, 1956
The team pursuit is one of the most fascinating events in the whole Olympics. Four riders have to be technically brilliant, riding close to each other’s wheel as they execute a 4km race. The team pursuit has long been a British strength: GB won it first in 1908 and then again 100 years later in Beijing. The bronze medal team of 1956 is notable because one of the quartet was Tommy Simpson, one of the most famous and successful British cyclists of all time, who died on a stage of the Tour de France in 1967.
CHRIS BOARDMAN
After 1920, GB went on a gold medal drought in Olympic cycling; the country still won plenty of medals but just could not get a gold. After 1920, nineteen medals – all silvers and bronzes – were won until 1992 when Boardman shocked the world with his space-age bike, designed by Lotus, which won him the individual pursuit so commandingly that no one else could get close to him.
YVONNE McGREGOR
It was only ninety-two years into the modern Olympics that women’s races were finally introduced. Women’s racing began in 1988. Twelve years later, in Sydney, in the 3,000m individual pursuit event, Yvonne McGregor, a tough Yorkshire woman, won bronze, the first cycling medal won by a British woman.
CHRIS HOY
Six days before his competition, in Athens in 2004, Hoy cycled over some molten tar in the Olympic village and fell, landing heavily. Luckily his crash took place just in front of the athletes’ medical centre. Six days later, he was on the line in a brilliant contest – the 1km time trial, in which athletes take turns to be timed over a kilometre. As Hoy waited, four riders in front of him each broke the Olympic record and Hoy’s task looked harder and harder. But Hoy then did exactly the same: he broke the record again and won gold. He did even better in Beijing four years later where he won three gold medals.
THE SUPER-TEAM AT BEIJING
British cyclists ruled the world at the Beijing velodrome. Seven gold medals put them far ahead of any other nation in the world. Sometimes it seemed the other nations were riding for second place. Chris Hoy took three golds, Bradley Wiggins took two, and two British girls, Rebecca Romero and Victoria Pendleton, took gold too. It is unlikely that any national team of any country will ever be this successful again.
NICOLE COOKE
While the riders ruled inside the Beijing velodrome, Cooke was already the queen of the road. The Beijing road race was played out in a heavy downpour but Cooke, a tough girl from Swansea, came off the last bend and into a slow hill to win the final sprint. The Olympic road race gold was the first cycling gold ever won by a British woman and it confirmed her as one of the greatest female road cyclists of all time.
Until 20 May, no one had taken Danny Powell very seriously. They liked him and they kind of guessed that he was extra special because they all knew he could run so blisteringly fast. Wow, could he run fast! Everyone knew he had the quickest pair of feet in the school. In fact, they all knew that Danny could run faster than anyone in any school in the whole of the United Kingdom.
Every summer it seemed, Danny would go to the UK School Games and come back champion. Whenever those UK School Games came round, the following Monday morning you almost knew that your school email inbox at Newham Secondary would deliver the same news: that Danny Powell had won the 100 metres. Again. This meant that he was the best young sprinter in the country. Still. Indeed, pretty much everyone who had ever met Danny knew that, one day, he would be a professional athlete.
But where the whole Danny story got a bit ridiculous was when he told them that in the summer holidays after his A levels, he was going to beat Usain Bolt.
Oh, yeah, Danny? No one beats Usain Bolt. Usain Bolt is the fastest human being of all time. Dream on, Danny.
Danny hated the idea of being a show-off and so he had not intended to let it slip. He loved to run and he loved to win. It was, by far, the best thing in his life. But he never bragged. Not around school. Nowhere. He never wanted other people to think that he was a show-off, a swank. And so his dream of beating Bolt was one that he kept completely to himself. And if it wasn’t for a robbery, from right under his nose, then it would have remained there.
It happened one day during school lunchtime. He wished it hadn’t. And it was the stupid thief’s fault. Such a stupid, dozy, hopeless thief. Danny was hanging around the school gates, the place he and his mate, loudmouth Anthuan, and a bunch of their mates in the sixth form always hung out at lunchtime.
No one saw the thief coming. He was probably only twenty years old, average in height and average in looks. He wore dark jeans and a dark T-shirt, but they only realized all that afterwards. At the time, all anyone realized was that with one slightly nervous and aggressive sweep of his arm, he had ripped off the shoulder bag that Jess had hanging loosely from her shoulder. He did it with such force that Jess, yelping in shock more than pain, fell to the ground.
Danny knew that it was wrong to get involved. Keep your nose out of trouble. That’s what his father always told him. So he stood and, for about two seconds, he watched as the bloke hotfooted it down the pavement. A series of thoughts flashed through Danny’s mind: Should I let him go? Should I stay out of trouble? Might I get hurt? And should I stay here and look after Jess? And then, in that very split second that he had persuaded himself to be cautious and avoid trouble, the thief stopped running and turned, and it seemed that he was smiling. He may just have been panting, out of breath, but from where Danny was standing it seemed that he had a triumphant grin on his face. And that was that. Danny was off.
The sight of Danny Powell at full speed is astonishing. He has a long stride and a natural balance, which combine into a beautiful elegance. So, when he is sprinting, it doesn’t look as though he is trying hard – it hardly seems as though his feet touch the ground; it is more as if he is gliding. But, boy, does he move fast.
He flashed like lightning down the road. It was about two seconds before the thief turned again and realized that he was being pursued and, at that stage, his smile disappeared for good. Danny started closing on him quick and as the distance between them was rapidly disappearing, passers-by moved out of the way and stopped and stared. As Danny got even nearer, the difference between his speed and the thief’s was so great, it was almost funny. The thief’s arms were pumping hard, flailing desperately from side to side but, compared to Danny, he was going so slowly it was like he was running in treacle.
Danny got closer and closer: thirty metres away, twenty-five metres, twenty … Suddenly, he was almost able to touch him when the thief turned round, saw that he was beaten and dropped the bag.
And that was when Danny stopped running. He didn’t want to catch the thief. What would he have done to him? Fought him? He had never fought anyone; he wouldn’t know what to do.
So he just stopped running and picked up Jess’s bag. And that was that. End of episode. At least so he thought.
The next day at Newham Secondary, they had school assembly. School assembly was held every Thursday and it was usually pretty dull. During school assembly, Danny and Anthuan and most of their friends would have their mobile phones out and would be busy texting each other. If you got caught with your mobile phone during assembly, it would be confiscated for the rest of the day. But hardly anyone ever got caught, at least not Danny or Anthuan; they were far too smart for that.
Up on the school stage stood the headmaster, Mr McCaffrey. As teachers go, Mr McCaffrey was OK. But he loved the sound of his own voice – and so he loved Thursdays and school assembly because that was his chance to be centre stage and do lots of talking. Mr McCaffrey also had a greying goatee beard that he seemed rather fond of even if he was slightly too old for it. He would stand and talk and stroke his goatee at the same time. Danny often wondered if Mr McCaffrey had any idea that barely anyone ever listened to a word he said.
Danny scrolled down the inbox of his phone. He was hoping for a text from Ricky, his brother. He adored Ricky, but Ricky was a student, away at university, and he never got in touch. Danny hated that. He missed Ricky. But he thought he might get a text from him today.
It was then, suddenly, that Danny’s attention to his phone was ripped away. Anthuan gave him a hefty nudge in the ribs with his elbow. ‘Dan,’ he whispered, out of the side of his mouth. ‘Listen up, Dan, he’s talking about you.’
Anthuan was right. Up on stage, Mr McCaffrey was babbling on, as ever, but he was now babbling on about a robbery incident the previous day. Oh no, please no! thought Danny. He hated the idea of being the centre of attention.
‘… and this thief thought he had got away with it,’ was what Mr McCaffrey was saying, ‘but he hadn’t accounted for the fact that at Newham Secondary, we happen to have the fastest young schoolboy in the country. So well done, Danny Powell.’
Mr McCaffrey then started clapping and there was a flutter of applause around the school hall. Danny looked down, trying to avoid everyone’s stares. But then Mr McCaffrey carried on: ‘And so I would like to ask Danny Powell to come up here for a minute.’
Oh no! You can’t be serious! thought Danny. But the headmaster was. And it was on stage that the day really took a turn for the worse.
‘Danny,’ Mr McCaffrey said, turning to him, ‘well done. You have made us all proud.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Danny replied.
‘And here we are, at the start of the athletics season. Have you got any big plans?’
Danny felt flustered. What should I say? he thought. So he decided he may as well be honest – and he just said: ‘Yes.’
‘Would you fancy running in the Olympics?’ Mr McCaffrey asked.
‘Of course,’ Danny replied. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘Exactly,’ said Mr McCaffrey. ‘Good luck, Danny.’ And Danny had just started walking off the stage when Mr McCaffrey said: ‘One other thing, Danny …’ So Danny stopped. ‘… I don’t suppose you could beat Usain Bolt, could you?’
Danny paused. What should I say? What should I say? And before he could stop himself, he told the truth. ‘It’s going to be tough, but that’s certainly the plan, sir.’
The second that Danny had let that sentence fly from his mouth, he wanted to catch it and take it back again. The school hall erupted with squeals and whistles and quite a lot of laughter. And Danny couldn’t stand people laughing at him.
Five minutes later, when assembly was over, the school hall had emptied and the students had piled out into the open air, he was made to feel even worse. ‘Dream on, Danny!’ was the first comment that was flung his way. ‘Danny, I hear Usain Bolt’s really scared.’ ‘Danny, Bolt could beat you on one leg.’ And: ‘Danny, what planet are you on? Come back down to earth, you might enjoy it down here.’
Ha! Ha! Very funny, the lot of you, thought Danny as he turned left out of the school hall towards the classrooms. He hated people thinking he was arrogant. But what he hated the most was the idea that people didn’t believe in him, that they should laugh at the very idea that he was going to beat Usain Bolt. I’ll prove them all wrong, he said to himself. ‘Bolt could beat you on one leg,’ they said. How he wanted to ram those comments down their precious little throats.
For the rest of the day, Danny was not allowed to forget it. Most people were too scared to say anything, but he could see them smirking to each other.
Some were brave enough to comment. ‘Usain’s got no chance!’ was one sarcastic comment. He hated that.
‘Good luck against Bolt!’ were the words of one younger boy. And he probably meant it, but Danny didn’t like that either.
At the end of the school day, feeling thoroughly dispirited, Dan sought out the company of Anthuan. But that didn’t turn out to be a very good idea either.
‘Are you coming out to the movies tomorrow night, Dan?’ he asked.
‘I can’t,’ Danny replied. ‘I’ve got to train, haven’t I?’
‘We’re all going,’ Anthuan said, slightly pleadingly, as if trying to play on Danny’s conscience.
‘I just can’t,’ Danny replied, shrugging. ‘You know that. Training. I’ve got to train. I’ve always got to train.’
Anthuan seemed disappointed and went quiet. They walked out of the school gates together. And then Anthuan asked him a question that really surprised him. And the way he asked it suggested that he was slightly uncomfortable about it himself.
‘Dan,’ he said, ‘do you really think you could beat Usain Bolt?’
Danny stopped walking, paused for a second and then answered: ‘Ant, I know it sounds crazy, and I know I sound stupid when I say it. But this is my dream. The Olympics are coming. I’ve got a one in a million chance of beating that guy. So yes, I do think I have a chance. It’s a slim one, but it’s still a chance. What do you think?’
Anthuan looked down at the ground and furrowed his brow as if he was thinking seriously. ‘I think you’re my best mate in the world, Dan,’ he replied slowly. ‘And I don’t want to be hard on you. But I hate seeing people laugh at you like they did today, you know that. So come on, Dan. You’re so young still and maybe you should remember that. You could be out having fun tomorrow night, but you don’t want to. Do you really think you’re ready to race Bolt? I just can’t help feeling that if you raced Bolt now, he’d have time to finish the race and eat a cheese sandwich before you came through the line.’
Dan looked at Anthuan with disgust. He felt angry and let down. ‘Oh, right, I see. So not even my best mate believes in me. See ya.’ And with that, he trotted off down the road and jumped straight on the 215 bus, leaving Anthuan standing alone.
Danny was furious. But, more than that, he was really upset. Not even Ant believes in me, he thought to himself. I’ll just have to prove him wrong too.
Books by Owen Slot
Running for Gold
Cycling for Gold
Every morning started with a bike race and Sam thought that it was about time he won one.
Every morning at Mr Parrott’s newsagent’s shop – early. They started at 6.30 a.m., Sam versus Nate, ready, steady, go – and away they went for thirty-eight minutes of frantic pedalling, thirty-nine on a bad day when the weather wasn’t friendly. When it was really bad, Sam would come back wet, shoes and socks soaked, and with mud spattered up his back. That wasn’t a good way to start the school day.
The race record was thirty-seven minutes and twelve seconds, and it was Sam who held it. The day he set it, he flew on his bike through the roads like a maniac; that was the day when the wind and every single traffic light seemed to be in his favour. He’d thrashed Nate easily. But that was a month ago, and his winning streak had pretty much ended there. Now it seemed he was losing more than he won – and that meant that he was not only losing the race but money too.
This was what happened every day at this shop on the edge of the Peak District: two fourteen-year-olds doing two newspaper rounds raced each other on their bikes. At the newsagent’s, which was called Anything & Everything, Mr Parrott would always have his customers’ newspapers laid out in two piles, all in perfect order. He was very precise. On the left was the pile for what he called the ‘west circuit’ and on the right was the pile for the ‘east circuit’. Sam and Nate would take one each.
‘Which do you fancy today, Nate?’ Sam asked. ‘West or east?’
It was Nate’s right to choose. Whoever won the previous day could decide whether he did the east or the west the following morning. The west was slightly longer, with more countryside, longer roads and fewer newspapers to deliver. The east circuit was shorter, with more newspapers for more houses that were closer together. If you did the east circuit, you delivered to sixty-eight houses; if you did the west circuit, you delivered to sixty-one. Whichever you picked, though, your time on the road was almost exactly the same. It was the perfect race.
Sam watched Nate’s face. He was sweeping his hair across his forehead and staring out of the shop window, checking the weather. Upstairs, in the kitchen above their heads, Sam could hear Mr Parrott starting to make breakfast for his family; he heard the kettle whistling; he heard Mr Parrott yelling to wake up his wife and kids: ‘C’mon, you Dozy Dogs!’ He always called them Dozy Dogs or Lazy Lizards, or sometimes Weary Wildebeest or Cuddly Kittens. And then he’d laugh heartily. When he was with his family, Mr Parrott was a happy man. Loud and happy. Sam really liked him.
At that moment Sam knew exactly what was going through Nate’s mind. If it was a good weather day, Nate would pick the west circuit; it was longer but there were less stops so you could really pick up speed and race it. However, if it was a bad weather day, Nate would avoid the west – he wouldn’t want to climb Freshton Hill in the wet, not dragging that newspaper trailer behind him, and worse was the wind that blew into your face when you got to the top. But today it wasn’t easy to decide as the weather was neither good nor bad.
Sam, though, knew exactly which route he wanted; he almost always wanted the west circuit. He almost always wanted the option that involved speed. Sam loved going fast.
‘You not feeling confident today?’ he said to Nate, teasing him gently. He wasn’t often allowed to tease him, especially not at school, but when they were at Anything & Everything the rules were slightly different. ‘Not sure you can beat me?’
‘You wish!’ Nate replied, shaking his head slowly and confidently. He leaned down and picked up the bigger pile. He was going to take the east.
Perfect! thought Sam. He picked up the other smaller bundle, which was very heavy nonetheless, and carried it out to the side passage beside the shop where the two bikes were locked up with the mini-trailers attached to them. He placed the newspapers gently in the trailer, and started fiddling with the cogs on his bike lock. The combination was 1968 – the last time Manchester City won the League, as his grandad so often reminded him; he’d never forget that. The lock sprang open. He was ready to go.
‘Right,’ said Nate, swinging his leg over his bike. ‘You ready?’
‘Sure am,’ Sam replied. He pressed the button on the side of his watch so it was in stopwatch mode.
‘OK. Ready, steady, see ya!’ And with that Nate peeled off left down the side of the road and Sam hammered his foot down and set off in the other direction. The race was on!
Sam loved to race. It seemed weird even to him, but tearing around the countryside at this horribly early hour with a small newspaper trailer attached to his bike had become the highlight of his day.
As he started speeding away in the opposite direction from Nate, he felt his legs warming up and his pedals spinning faster. On the west circuit you had to go half a mile before your first set of deliveries: seven houses next to each other in Garrold Street, two of them taking the Sun, three Daily Mails, one Guardian and one Times. After that, it was another mile, straight, no traffic lights, and you could really get the body pumping, before deliveries in Arthur Road and Eric Avenue.
The east circuit was less fun. More stop-start, more traffic lights, though Sam didn’t think for a minute that Nate stopped at the lights. There was no way that Nate could be beating him if he was obeying the Highway Code.
They had been racing now for two months, pretty much ever since Sam had joined as the new boy on Mr Parrott’s delivery team. Nate had been doing it for ages, always the same two routes, always £25 for a week’s worth of work.
Sam needed the money. His mum didn’t have any to spare; she was always apologizing, scratching around to try and help him out, but as she told him: ‘Times are tough, Sam.’ It seemed that she said it more and more these days. So when Sam heard that Mr Parrott needed a new delivery boy, he was round at Anything & Everything in no time.
He knew Mr Parrott well. All his life, he and his mum had lived in a flat just round the corner from Anything & Everything. One day, when he was eight, she said that he was old enough to go off on his own if he wanted and spend his pocket money on sweets there. And now that he was fourteen he was old enough for the paper round. And he didn’t need to ask his mum for pocket money. Now he had his own and he liked that. And he liked being able to offer to help his mum. When she asked him to go to Anything & Everything for a pint of milk or some bread, he always offered to pay. But she’d say, ‘No, you little darling, you’ve earned that money, you spend it on yourself.’
Except that, since Nate suggested they race for money, Sam didn’t have so much to spend on himself. Three weeks ago, Nate had come up to him in the school dinner queue and put forward his proposal: ‘Look, we do five days’ work a week and earn twenty-five pounds each. That’s a fiver a day, ten pounds together. If we’re going to carry on racing every day, why don’t we say a tenner for the winner, nothing to the loser? It’ll make it more fun.’
Sam had gone away to think about it. It did sound fun and he knew that he’d be able to earn more money that way. He normally beat Nate after all. And, since it was Nate’s suggestion, he was keen to say yes. He felt they were starting to become friends. At school they’d never really been mates. Nate was in the football team and Sam wasn’t – enough said. But, with their morning paper round and the daily race, when they were around Anything & Everything Nate was much chattier. So Sam eventually reached the conclusion that if Nate wanted to race for money, then he did too.
The next Monday, though, when they arrived at Anything & Everything for the first day of the prize-money paper round, Nate turned up with a new bike.
Sam turned out of Eric Avenue and flashed a look at his watch. He was making good time this morning.
After Eric Avenue, the houses started to spread out a bit, though every time you got up any speed, you’d have to stop, fold a newspaper and drop it through another letter-box before you could get going again. This was the frustrating part of the west circuit. After that, it was head down and up into Freshton Hill. Sam loved the feeling of going up that hill. His bike was a bit old and cranky, but he looked after it, oiled it, checked the tyres every morning. Even on this old banger he thought every day that he’d beat Nate. But he was dead envious of Nate’s new bike. It wasn’t even Nate’s; he’d borrowed it off Deano Wells, who was also in the school football team.
Nate had said, ‘Yeah, my bike’s broken. There’s a problem with the brakes. I had to use Deano’s.’
But Sam didn’t entirely believe that. And he would definitely have liked a bike like Deano’s himself, it was so light! It was a Rolls-Royce of bikes. He gazed at the gears and immediately thought of the help they’d give Nate on the Freshton Hill climb. Yet he was still convinced he could beat him. He knew that at school, in football and other sports, Nate was almost always one of the best and certainly better than he was. But on his bike Sam felt differently; he felt powerful.