LAST OF AN OLD ORDER

The 1996 Olympic campaign was the last one Team GB undertook without lottery money. However, while that made them less successful than recent years, they were no less colourful, then coach Doug Dailey tells Vern Pitt

- Vern Pitt

The soundtrack to the summer of 1996 was unquestionably ‘Wannabe’, the infectious pop smash hit that catapulted the Spice Girls into the British and international consciousness. It, along with Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’, heralded the start of new era, Britpop, where an all-conquering cohort of Brits would take the music scene at home and abroad by storm.

Lines like “Get your act together we could be just fine,” could have been aimed at the British cycling scene, which was on the verge of experiencing a similar journey to world domination – albeit at a slower rate. But for that summer, as the countdown began for the Atlanta Olympics, the old order still reigned.

The sport was short on money and compromises had to be made in the buildup – even a Rolling Stone was tapped up to help finance the trip. It was the last Olympic cycle they would undertake on a shoestring budget. Lottery funding came in the following year and British Cycling’s march – Union Jack miniskirt not included – to world domination would follow. But for now things were very much done on the cheap.

Central to making the most of that on the road to Atlanta was Doug Dailey, head coach of the British team for the previous 10 years and a professional racer himself before that. He was a central figure in the running of the elite programme, such as it was, and despite retiring after the 1996 Games, would go on to return in a logistics role for every Olympics up to 2008.