CHRIS Hoy's emphatic displays at the latest World Cup event at Manchester was the surest sign yet that he is still the supreme force in track sprint cycling.
But, while he is still pinning his hopes on more gold in London in 2012, and crossing his fingers that he will be able to eke things out for a further two years beyond that and bow out in fairytale fashion at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, at 33 he accepts that the day will come when the next generation will take centre stage.
The good news is that Scotland should still have a satisfying presence. In Edinburgh for a signing session for his autobiography, he said he was confident there will be further Scottish influences when the sport he has helped catapult from the realms of niche to mainstream, writes its next chapter.
"There is no lack of talent but the difficulty is making the most of it." The hope would be that the Chris Hoy Velodrome, which is being built to host the cycling at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, will allow his homeland to adopt a scaled down version of the successful British model and capitalise on the talent breaking through. "Callum Skinner and Kevin Stewart have had a great year as juniors but it's important that we don't just make the most of one or two individuals but instead try to increase that base and try to get more people involved at grass-roots. The more people who experience track riding, and have the opportunity to do that 12 months of the year, the more chance there is of one or two popping out at the top.
"The good thing is we have got people coming through. We have a guy called John Paul who is from Scotland. He is under 16 this year and won all the titles at that age group so he raced up an age category and beat Kevin and Callum to finish second in the British Junior Men's Sprint." It was Hoy's gold medal ride in Athens in 2004 which inspired Paul to take up the sport and the role model says he has the kind of raw ability which could, one day, see him race for his own major medals. "He is still just a boy really but he is beating guys already a lot bigger and stronger than he is and he has a touch of class about the way he rides. With him and Kevin and Callum you have a potential Scottish team sprint team for the future if they can keep improving. They are getting to the hard age now. At first you make massive steps up just because you are growing and getting stronger but then, all of a sudden, you have to deal with the plateau that inevitably comes and then it's down to the mental strength, keeping the faith and continuing to work hard. If they come through that they can be a very strong team."
If anyone can testify to the growing number of challengers at British level, it's Hoy. For many the triple gold medal success in Beijing would have been the perfect time to bow out but a home Olympics was too much of an incentive. Some have pondered his ability to maintain his position at the front of the pack but the World Cup success was the perfect reminder of how serious his intentions are. "I couldn't realistically have hoped for any more from the National Championships and the World Cup. Both hit the very, very top of my projected performances and I was really happy and I still feel there is more in the tank. I know you listen to sports people all the time and they are not going to say 'yeah, you may have seen the best of me, I may be over the hill, I am full of doubts'. You do have those doubts, though. Therefore when you hear sports people saying, 'yeah, I am going to keep going', and 'yeah, there's more to come', a lot of the time you can be forgiven for taking that with a pinch of salt but hopefully I let my legs do the talking and the results speak for themselves."
Chris Hoy celebrates after beating Matthew Crampton in the final of the Open Sprint Championship at the the British National Track Championships at the Manchester Velodrome
Frenchmen Kevin Sireau and Gregory Bauge were the only notable absentees in Manchester but the knowledge that he had beaten them both earlier in the year allowed him to enjoy the triple gold achievement, which was enough to secure qualification for next year's World Championships, in Denmark, in February and allows him to concentrate fully on training over the next few months.
"I'm not saying that I would have definitely beaten them if they had been there but I know now that you don't need everybody to be there to know if you are in good form."
The strength and depth in the Great British squad helps in that respect.
"You always feel as though you train 100 per cent but with this team there is no way you can even subconsciously take your feet off the gas because you have got these guys around you. I think some people assume that for me it's easy, that, yeah, I have some team-mates pushing me but that I am still in a different class but that's absolute nonsense. With these guys, Jason (Kenny], Matt (Crampton], Ross (Edgar], Dave (Daniell] , in training, day to day, it's a continual battle and one day Dave might be the fastest, the next day it's Matt, the next day it's me, or Ross or Jason, so I do think people are mistaken if they think I'm still a way up there and they are fighting to get up to me. We are very, very close and that competition and rivalry keeps pushing me on."
At the moment, his experience is giving him the slight edge but he knows it will be tough to sustain that. "While I still hope to be the best in London, I don't expect to necessarily continue unbeaten all the way through. I fully expect that Jason or Matt or somebody will take a scalp but that wouldn't necessarily mean that the tide had turned.
"Every day is like a competition anyway and if one of the guys is quicker than you, it feels like losing a race and if you're the fastest, you come away with a real sense of satisfaction and the good thing is that if you know you are the quickest in that group and can keep yourself a little bit above them then there are not many guys in the world who will be able to beat you because the standard in the British team is so high."
The only problem is knowing when to play his joker. With so many head-to-head battles, he knows that his challengers are getting to know his tactics so he has a few surprises. "But the chances are I could be racing one of them at the Olympics, so maybe I should save them until then."
