Sir Chris Hoy in duel with Jason Kenny duel for Team GB sprint place

[divingbrit]

Great Britain coach Shane Sutton and performance director Dave Brailsford are facing the toughest selection decision of their lives as the Olympics looms.

Do they go with Sir Chris Hoy, the Olympic champion, or world champion Jason Kenny for the individual sprint at London 2012? Only one rider can be selected and come the day a nation of instant Olympic experts will be waiting with some anticipation for the answer from Brailsford’s office.

To aid the selection process, and indeed make it tolerable for all concerned, the GB management have reduced the two riders to a series of two coloured lines on a clutch of graphs recording comparative power outputs, heart recovery, speed, acceleration and, of course, competition results.

The two names on everybody’s lips are never mentioned. Two of the world’s great track sprinters have deliberately been stripped of their identity while past championship performances and medals are given no credence. Current form is the only data being studied.

With only two track meetings left before the Olympics – this week’s Samsung World Cup at the London Velodrome and then the UCI World Championships in Melbourne in April – the number crunching is reaching a crescendo.

Hoy still, marginally, has the faster top-end speed – 9.9 sec for the flying 200m compared with 10.1 – while Kenny possibly looks the more natural match racer
Sutton has been most closely involved with the two riders this season, travelling to Australia with them for a five-week training block before Christmas and almost winced in pain on Tuesday when pressed about the selection issue before giving a remarkably candid answer.

This is the man remember whose insisted as he departed from Beijing that “if Chris Hoy is still riding for GB at London 2012 we won’t have done our job properly”.

“Yes I did say that,” Sutton admits. “And it’s a testament to his greatness that he is proving us wrong. You would think a guy who has won three Olympic gold medals at his age is going to go away and enjoy all the riches in life. His desire would surely dwindle. But it never has. He has made me out to look a complete liar but that is the greatness of the guy, he is a superb athlete.

“So we have got a super-fast young athlete and current world champion on the one hand and you have the great Sir Chris Hoy, triple Olympic champion on the other with power to burn. Pure speed versus power, how do you pick?

“You don’t look at the person, you look at the numbers. We record everything and just look at the evidence. We are looking at everything across the board and we will leave it as late as possible because of fluctuations in form. And you must have consistency of evidence. They train on the same bikes, the same wheels, the same virtually everything.”

A fascinating mental exercise which depends on the ability of Sutton and Brailsford to step away from the subject matter when of course deep down they will know which coloured wiggle represents who.

Sutton said: “It’s an ongoing process but it is a beautiful situation to be in. Given what I am seeing from Sir Chris of late he coming back to his best but then again Jason is on fire. It’s going to be tough decision and there is no set formula, although whoever performs best at the World Championship will probably have one foot in the door.”

Friendly rivals – but rivals nonetheless – Hoy and Kenny are sharing the same room this week at their Canary Wharf hotel. There are some who would not.

“I share with Chris quite a lot because we do the same races and schedule, we need to get up at the same time of day,” says Kenny, who won silver behind Hoy in the sprint in Beijing.

“We are team-mates above all else. We talk about anything really, its only bike racing at the end of the day. We have yet to fall out over it yet, well majorly anyway. You can get a bit flustered on the rack but its all forgotten afterwards which is I think is the way its has got to be.”

Hoy concurs and adds that in his long and varied career he has constantly been fight for selection against firm friends – Jason Queally, Craig McLean and Jamie Staff.

“No matter who you race against, you try to expose their weakness. The only difference is that with friends and colleagues they know what your weaknesses are you know how they will ride the race. It makes it a bit more or a mind game, a bit cat and mouse which I enjoy.

“At the end of the day you race as hard as you can, it’s war on the track bur as soon as its finished you shake hands, we are friends off the track.

Telegraph.co.uk