Track Superstars

How Team GB have become the greatest velodrome cyclists on the planet

 

It’s safe to say that Great Britain’s cycling team doesn’t like being boiled down to buzz phrases. However there was one phrase that buzzed around the velodrome centre like a mosquito over the final few days of track competition in Rio, as journalists and rivals tried to get to the bottom of Great Britain’s extraordinary success.

The GB cycling team — the athletes, coaches and mechanics in the track centre but also the army of coaches, sports scientists and performance analysts whose work often goes unseen — were “controlling the controllables.” It meant deploying new skinsuits, riding new bikes, and practising starts, changeovers and splits so much in training that they could treat their pre- Olympics Newport holding camp as a dress rehearsal for the real thing.

Laura Trott’s second competition of the Games — after helping GB to dominate the women’s team pursuit — is about as uncontrollable a track cycling event as you’ll find at the Olympics. The omnium takes place over two days, involves six tests of endurance and features three bunch races where just about anything can happen. But just you try telling that to the 24-year-old from Cheshunt.

“I felt in control, I felt strong, I felt good out there,” Trott said after winning gold and, in so doing, becoming Britain’s greatest ever female Olympian. “I’ve done so much hard work for the points race [the final race in the omnium], training and doing race stuff with [women’s endurance coach] Paul Manning that I knew coming into it that I would have the legs for it.”