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The 6 best moments from Great Britain’s Olympic cycling revolution
Great Britain’s Olympic team transformed itself from lacklustre to legendary, bolstered by National Lottery support beginning from the cusp of the millennium in 1999. It was a short turnaround to the Sydney Olympics in 2000, where Jason Queally won gold in the kilometre and the team sprint squad secured silver.
Dave Brailsford was promoted to the programme director role and track success was just the beginning, with the likes of Nicole Cooke winning gold in the women’s road race at Beijing 2008 and Bradley Wiggins time-trialling to gold at the London 2012 off the back of his Tour de France title, which was the first for a British rider.
The cycling boom saw Great Britain hoisted to the top of the medal standings in the sport at the Olympics, a plethora of medals largely won on the track and bolstered by legends including Chris Hoy, and Laura and Jason Kenny.
We look back at some of the best moments from GB’s gold boom (so far).
2008: Chris Hoy’s hat-trick breaks 100-year record
Chris Hoy became the first British Olympian in 100 years to win three gold medals in one Olympics with victory in the keirin, team sprint and individual sprint. He beat fellow Scot Ross Edgar in the keirin and teamed up with Jamie Staff and Jason Kenny in the team sprint. France had beaten them to the world title five months prior, yet Great Britain took the win by half a second for Olympic gold.
The individual sprint finals saw a thrilling match-up between 32-year-old Hoy and 20-year-old Kenny. Two riders who knew each other so closely. A saunter around the base of the track began proceedings before Kenny launched his sprint from the front. As the bell rang for the final lap, Hoy began to claw back, using Kenny’s slipstream to slingshot ahead after the final bend. The first heat went to the Scotsman.
The best-of-three wouldn’t go that far, with Hoy victorious in the second round. As well as breaking that 100-year record, Hoy also claimed the honour of becoming Scotland’s most successful Olympian.
2008: Breakthroughs on the road
Great Britain’s first medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing came from Nicole Cooke in the women’s road race. Making her way into a group of five on the penultimate lap of a hilly circuit in the pouring rain, it came down to a three-rider sprint to the line after 126km. Cooke edged ahead of Sweden’s Emma Johansson and Italy’s Tatiana Guderzo and became the first British woman to win the road race.
Just a few days later, 25 riders took part in the 23.5km time-trial and Emma Pooley finished in second place, just under 25sec down on the United States’ Kristin Armstrong to win silver – also a first for British women in the event.
2012: Bradley Wiggins sits on the throne
One of the most iconic images of London 2012. With his trademark sideburns, Bradley Wiggins flashed victory Vs on the victor’s throne after winning the individual time-trial by 26sec ahead of world champion Tony Martin (Germany).
He had arrived at his home Games off the back of winning the Tour de France, which made him the first British winner of cycling’s greatest race, and capped off his great summer with gold.
2012: Team pursuit triumph
It was a perfect storm. British cycling’s explosion coincided with the Olympics returning to London for the first time since 1948. Great Britain again shot to the top of the cycling medal standings with eight gold medals, the majority coming from the boards of the velodrome.
Many records were broken in the process, including in both the men and women’s team pursuits. Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas, Steven Burke and Pete Kennaugh lined up against Australia’s Jack Bobridge, Glenn O’Shea, Rohan Dennis and Michael Hepburn for the gold medal. They led the whole race race and set a new team pursuit world record with a time of 3:51:659.
Dani King, Laura Trott and Jo Rowsell also blew away the competition with their new world record time of 3:14:051, beating the United States by five seconds.
2012: Victoria Pendleton vs Anna Mears
Great Britain vs Australia. One of the defining track rivalries from this period. Victoria Pendleton and Anna Meares were fierce rivals, facing off countless times throughout their careers including in the sprint at the 2008 Olympics where Pendleton came out on top.
The Brit set an Olympic record in qualifying at the London games and beat Kristina Vogel in the semi-finals to set up another showdown against Meares. Pendleton was relegated in the first race for riding out of the sprinting lane. Through a project dubbed ‘Know Thy Enemy’, Meares forced Pendleton to the front in the second sprint – her weakness in head-to-heads – to win gold for Australia.
The pair shook hands, and Pendleton raised her rival’s aloft as she ended her cycling career with a silver medal in front of a home crowd.
2021: The most decorated Olympians
The postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics thrusted Laura and Jason Kenny into an unrivalled status. In a dominant madison performance with Katie Archibald, Kenny won her fifth gold medal, becoming the first British woman to win gold at three different Olympic Games and the most decorated female Olympian in Great Britain’s history.
On the final day of the Olympics, her husband Jason won his seventh gold medal (ninth medal in total) in the keirin to become the most successful British Olympian of all time.
With a whopping 12 golds between them, they are Britain’s most decorated Olympic couple. Jason retired in 2022 and Laura retired prior to the Paris Olympics in 2024.
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