H&H Hero to Hero Andrew Hoy and Katy Marchant

The seven-time eventing Olympian met the Team GB track cyclist to talk about training, competing in the heat and hopes for Tokyo

KATY: Covid’s been a funny one – I’ve tried to make the best of a bad situation. We were at the World Championships in March 2020, the last qualification event for the Olympics, as Covid kicked in. That was a really stressful period because it was a struggle for me to get qualified as a rider without a strong team, even though I was finishing in the top five. But thankfully we got qualified because then we came home and went into lockdown.

I was one of those people who said, “They’re never going to cancel the Olympic Games.” But actually, not travelling for a year and having 12 months’ stress-free training has been amazing and I’ve never felt better. What about you?

ANDREW: My horse, Vassily De Lassos, is young in terms of the years left in front of him, so for me I felt it worked to my advantage. It’s given me the opportunity not to be pressured to try to get to a target point as quickly, and time to train step by step in a logical manner.

KATY: I’ve actually ridden horses all my life, my family have horses and my sister Amy Sherrard does a little bit of British Eventing. So to a certain extent, I understand the difference between riding a bike and a horse – I appreciate the bike always does as it’s told and the horse doesn’t always! So did Covid get in the way of your preparations?

ANDREW: Covid combined with Brexit have been challenges. We’ve made many plans throughout the year, then 24 hours before we’re about to execute them, something has changed and we’ve had to cancel. It’s equally difficult for selectors and the high-performance team – they have a structure they’d like everyone to follow to prove their point in the selection, but that hasn’t happened.