Azizulhasni Awang....Our Hero!!

The Gold Lost ... by a whisker

By Ivan Speck

The margin may have been just half a wheel but it was all Sir Chris Hoy required to re-establish his domination of track sprinting here last night.

The 10th world championship gold medal of his glittering career, won in the men’s keirin event, was seized not with the imperious form of Beijing but through gritted teeth and a steely-eyed glare.

With Malaysia’s Azizulhasni Awang closing him down with every turn of the pedals, Hoy held on to burst through the line and erupt in celebration of Britain’s first gold of the week.

The magnitude of his achievement only struck him as his heartbeat slowed in the aftermath of the race. He said: ‘It’s fantastic. It makes it more special to be back here where I won my first world title eight years ago. I would never have predicted then that I would be coming back in eight years’ time, let alone to win my 10th world title, so I’m delighted.

‘That was a hard victory. The standard is going up and up all the time and there is no room to relax and certainly no complacency from me.’

In the bag: Sir Chris Hoy snatches keirin victory

Hoy’s progression to the final was not without its own drama at the start line — the second day in succession in which the Scot had suffered an unexpected beginning to a race.

After his broken pedal on Wednesday, the knight of the realm had barely made it across the line in his first heat when he found himself sitting on his backside.

Malaysia’s Josiah Ng Onn Lam curiously decided to cut straight across Hoy, cutting under his front wheel and leaving Hoy in an undignified heap on the ground, raising his arms to the roof in exasperation. Lam was rightly disqualified from the re-run, leaving Hoy to channel his anger into qualification.

He added: ‘I certainly didn’t enjoy it and it made me angry, but that’s another emotion that you are trying to keep in check. I didn’t want to let the red mist descend and then lose the plot.’

Hoy apart, things are not progressing so smoothly for the rest of the British team. Two days into the competition in the Ballerup Super Arena, the signs are that the crushing domination of track cycling which reached its all-conquering peak in Beijing, where seven of the 10 Olympic golds were brought home, may be

on the wane, temporarily at least.

There is no need to panic just yet. London is still more than two years away and performances have dipped only a fraction, but it seems that the rest of the world in general, and Australia in particular, has caught up.

It is Australia, not Britain, who head the medal table with four golds already, one appropriately in last night’s women’s team pursuit final in which the British trio of Wendy Houvenaghel, Lizzie Armitstead and Joanna Rowsell were made to settle for silver.

Victoria Pendleton failed to collect a medal of any colour after a poor first day of competition. With young partner Jess Varnish, she could finish only fourth in the women’s sprint — one of the new events on the 2012 Olympic programme.