FIRST OLYMPIC MEDAL 🥈 Sir Chris Hoy’s Golden Moments - Episode 1 - Sydney 2000

I am here with none other than this legend, Sir Chris Hoyce. Pleasure to have him here. And we are going to look through, Chris. I'm going to say some of your golden moments, Olympic golden moments. OK. Because there is a lot of golden moments in your career, world championships that are not on here. But let's start. I'm going to not say the beginning, but the beginning of the Olympics. OK. For you. Yeah, yeah. All the way back in Sydney. That's right. Which was 2000. 2000, yeah. You managed to find pictures that are not black and white as well, which I'm impressed at. I mean, only just, but talk us through these. Penny farthings, bamboo rims, you know. I mean, it does look, when we look at this here, just check the helmets out. Yeah, the helmets. These weren't even proper helmets, were they? Well, so helmets in those days were just head fairings. So there was no padding, there was no protection. It was just like a, yeah, a plastic head fairing. And then because they said, well, it's a time, any time trial event, you could do that. But then a few folk crashed in individual events, you know, on their own. So they thought, actually, they should be safe and they should have some protection. So this was before the head protection. So we're riding around basically like, you know, like a cap on, nothing else. Jesus, right. So I'm going to go into a little bit more detail with these, because back then that was the start of GB, really, when it started to really take shape. Compare that all the way down to London. Yeah. What was it like building up to the Games here? It's obviously very different as times progressed up to London. What was it like for you? Yeah, well, I was a full-time student until the year before. So until May 1999, I was at university in Edinburgh. So I was doing it part-time, made the team for the Worlds in 1999. We got a silver medal out of the blue at the World Championships. So that made a medal in Sydney a possibility. Like, it wasn't just a pipe dream. It was like, there's a chance we could get a medal at the Olympics. What were you doing in uni? Well, I did physics and maths at St Andrews. And then I transferred and did sports science at Edinburgh to finish it off. And so, yeah, I was 24. So you're still doing pressures as well? Just people... I was, well, yeah, I was still, I was kind of, I started taking it a bit more seriously by my final year. But, yeah, you still had the odd student night out. So it was far from the kind of marginal gains focusing on every single detail. It was still very kind of basic and even trying to get equipment. And, you know, I remember going to a golf shop to get the gloves in Sydney the week before. No. The gear sizes we were riding back then. So it was team sprint I did. Who were you with here? So I'm doing the first lap. Second lap was Craig McLean. Third lap was Jason Quigley. And the night before the team sprint, Jason was riding the kilo. He came fifth at the World Championships in 1999. So there was an outside chance of a bronze medal. Yeah. And of course, he won it. And it was, I remember sitting in the stands watching him. And that was the moment where like, oh my God, Jason's Olympic champion. It wasn't, it just wasn't on our radar. We thought, well, Turner was going to win it. Yeah. It was what time is Turner going to win it with, it's not who's going to win it. But Jason put an amazing time down pretty early on, put the pressure on the last three riders, and they all kind of folded. I've got goosebumps thinking about it. Because obviously back then as well, what's crazy is you were there watching it. I know nowadays you'd be in bed. Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah, the night before. Sitting in the stands. And it was, and then I remember as soon as he won it, I was so full of adrenaline. I could barely sleep that night. I was so excited. But knowing that you've got the Olympic champion behind you in the team sprint to do the anchor leg, that was, that was, I thought, we've got a chance here. And it was such a, such a boost. And the French were unbeaten. You know, they had the world record. They had the three best guys in the world up until then, riding one, two, three. So yeah, to beat Gagne, Rousseau and Tourneau in the team sprint was unlikely, but we thought we had a chance of beating the Aussies and beating the Germans. And we did, we got the final, we got a silver medal. Yeah, I was riding. This was the first one, wasn't it? The first Olympic medal for you. Yeah, first Olympic medal. 48, 14, I was riding. I think Craig was on 50, 14. No way. Yeah, and Jason was maybe 51, 14. Big gear at the back, you know, 98. Just to give riders an idea now, what are they riding on now? The men will be sprinting on 65, 12, 65, 13, that kind of thing. So this, this wouldn't even be a warmup for the junior riders, you know, a warmup gear. It would be, yeah, the cadences would be hitting, would be about 155, between 150, 155, and they're probably hitting around 120 now. So it's a different, a different world, but yeah, I'll never forget getting that medal. Although I look a bit miserable in this picture. Look how, I was going to say, look how young you look as well now. It's incredible. I know, it's, well, that's half a lifetime ago. That was, I'm 48 now, that was 24 years ago. Bloody hell. But yeah, he, so with Jason winning his gold, gave us a massive lift, but I remember getting that silver medal, and you know how athletes go, oh, silver was like a gold to me. But it genuinely was, because we weren't expecting, it wasn't even a chance of winning gold really, but an outside chance of a bronze or maybe a silver. And we won the silver, and I remember waking up the next morning, and we were staying in a house outside or near the track, and I hung the medal over the bedpost, and I remember waking up in the morning, the first thing I woke up, I was like, where is it? Is it, was it a dream? You know, and I was like, I've got an Olympic medal. And I remember that feeling of just thinking, this is something that anybody will understand and recognise. You know, you tell people you've got a World Cup medal or a World Championship medal, they don't really understand, you know, they don't really know what that means, but everybody understands an Olympic medal. Yeah, of course. So that was a huge moment.