RIDE OF A LIFE TIME

It’s easy to forget in this golden age, but not everybody who earns an Olympic ride in a GB jersey ends up on a cereal box. James Shrubsall spoke to five riders for whom the Games was a one-off experience, but no less memorable for it

- James Shrubsall

These days at the Olympics, Britain’s cyclists are achieving what once seemed impossible, and we’re all familiar with the world-beating stories of Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton. In fact, as riders that would pop up again and again across multiple Games — each time bringing home the bacon — they have become, along with others, household names.

But, particularly in a pre-lottery age when British Cycling didn’t have the money to nurture talent from a young age as it does now, one-off Olympic appearances were not uncommon and neither was being able to ride at the Games unfettered by major pressure to bring home a medal. But while these performances are easy to overlook among the myriad medals of recent times, for the protagonists they are far from forgotten.

CW hears their stories.

Adrian Timmis Los Angeles 1984, team pursuit

In 1984 future Tour de France finisher Adrian Timmis was a 20-year-old track rider. A win in the 1981 junior individual pursuit had pigeonholed him as a track rider, “from then until after the Olympics, basically. Track was just what I did, though I wouldn’t say I was a track rider [as such].” In fact it was the Games that marked the shift from track to road. That’s not to say Los Angeles wasn’t quite an experience.

“It was dream come true,” he says. “It was one of those things as a kid that I’d read about… watched on Grandstand or whatever. And they were the first big, commercial Olympics, so it was an eye-opener. I’d been to three World Championships before – well, this was just on another level. So commercial, I think McDonald’s sponsored it.