CAPITAL cycling star Chris Hoy was back in action at the World Track Championship today just hours after being thwarted in his bid to land the eighth World Track Championship title of his career in Manchester, writes COLIN RENTON.
The British trio of Hoy, fellow Scot Ross Edgar and Englishman Jamie Staff had no answer to the awesome power of the French squad as the home riders were forced to settle for silver in the team sprint, despite setting a new British record.
Howeve
r, the medal extended Hoy's amazing record in the team sprint, being the tenth successive year he has finished on the podium since contributing to the British squad that clinched silver in Berlin in 1999.
Hoy and his colleagues had posted the second-fastest time by a British trio when they clocked 43.910 seconds in qualifying for the gold medal ride off with defending champions France, who rewrote the record books with a new world best of 43.514sec.
Although the Brits went quicker in the final, recording 43.777sec – the best time by a British threesome – the French, with Hoy's perennial rival Arnaud Tournant replacing Mickael Bourgain to line up alongside Gregory Bauge and Kevin Sireau, went even faster than they had in their heat.
Their time of 43.271 gave them a sizeable winning margin and earned the respect of Hoy, who said: "They broke the world record with each of their rides so we can't be too disappointed with our performance. I thought we produced a good ride and I'm sure we have more to give."
With one eye on the Olympics in Beijing where the French will again be the team to beat, Hoy added: "The pressure will now be on them."
There was also a warning that the race for gold in China is not guaranteed to be a two-team contest when the Netherlands beat Germany for third place, and in the process produced a faster time than Britain managed in the final.
However, Hoy had no time to dwell on the outcome as he immediately started his build up to the individual event, which got underway this afternoon and continues this evening.
He admits that before his first-choice event, the kilometre time trial was axed from the Olympics, he never took the individual sprint too seriously.
That has now changed as he explained: "In the past, I was never really interested in it which is why when I did race the sprint, I was doing it half-heartedly. But now the sprint and Keirin are my only individual events at the Olympics, I now analyse every race that there has ever been in the sprint since 2001. I have my computer hard drive at home full of races and race analysis."
The team sprint silver was Britain's second medal of the opening day, with Bradley Wiggins having taken gold in the individual pursuit when he beat Dutchman Jenning Huizenga.
The full article contains 500 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
