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FREE HEROES, VILLAINS AND VELODROMES: CHRIS HOY AND BRITAINS TRACK CYCLING REVOLUTION PDF Richard Moore | 368 pages | 30 Aug 2012 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9780007265329 | English | London, United Kingdom Chris Hoy's success took brutal hard work and a cycling revolution - BBC Sport We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Another book I'm not sure I know how to write about. The first half of it I loved, the second half of it just got on my tits. Do I sing the praises of the first half or just pick away at what's wrong with the second half? Oh decisions, decisions, decisions. Strengths: Moore conducted numerous interviews with the key players, meaning the book offers a variety of voices and viewpoints. The benefit of this is particularly obvious when you compare Moore's version of Hoy's story with the one presented in the official autobiography ghosted by Moore. Weaknesses: Critical insight into the British Cycling set-up seems to stop with the departure of Peter Keen. On the other side of the story, Moore gets a tad too close to his subject - Hoy - and starts spouting some serious bullshit. And he really doesn't need to do down road cycling and Mark Cavendish in order to make Hoy and the British Cycling track programme look good. Once upon a time, British cyclists ruled the world. Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution just on the track. They were kings of the road too. I'm not making this shit up. Ok, so it was away back in the time of Victoria, Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution the point is it happened. Hell, the Brits were so good they even had one of the sport's first real villains, Choppy Warburton, the Michele Ferrari of his day. Britons were also innovators. Go UK! But then Britain fell in love with the Heroes and the football. Cycling fell out of favour. Heroes came and went, but they were mavericks, succeeding despite the lack of support from the system. Then, in the nineties, the system changed. And in the past dozen years Britain has gone from being a make-weight to one of the top dogs in international cycling. Well, on the track at least. Moore, the author of the rather good In Search Of Robert Millarought make for a good choice of storyteller here. A cyclist himself, he knows the system from the inside, and knows Hoy personally from their days representing Scotland at the Commonwealth Games: "Chris and I were team-mates once. We Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution in the same Scotland team at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lampur inbut in many ways we belonged to different eras. For him, the Commonwealth Games were the start - they provided a springboard. For me, they were the end, the Commonwealth Games being as high as the bar of my ambition - I use the word advisedly - was set. And certainly for the first half of the book Moore fulfils the role perfectly. He talks to the people who know Hoy - his parents, team-mates, former coaches and the like, and from them builds up a picture of the man, and partly of Scottish and British cycling in the nineties. The story is told economically, efficiently. The book breezes along and you think you're onto a real winner. But somewhere around halfway through the book, Moore hits a speed wobble. Then again, it could be me. But it's happened more or less in the same place each time I've read the book. So I'm blaming the author. I think it's that Moore gets Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution to Hoy - too close - and the early, almost matter-of- fact distance gives over to some out and out cheerleading. It begins with the axing of the kilo from the Olympic schedule, when Moore stops reporting what actually happened and starts arguing for what he wished had happened. Moore suggests that, rather than surrendering any track disciplines to make room for BMX, the UCI should have axed the road time trial. Or maybe he just doesn't care. It's funny - Moore would say ironic - that this kilo rant comes after talking to Steve Peters, whose whole argument is about separating emotional responses from logical ones. Here Moore's all emotion and no logic. Moore's whole save the kilo spiel is based on the fact that Heroes was Hoy's event. Well, Hoy's for the previous four or five years anyway, the Scot having only taken it up after the Sydney Olympics. But the arguments that Moore makes in favour of the kilo - he falls just a little short of calling it cycling's blue riband event - simply don't hold any water. And that was after the BBC had got involved with the project. Then comes the serious pom-pom waving, which involves Moore suggesting of Hoy's altitude flying five-hundred metre record that "it is difficult to imagine it ever being beaten. Or how about, after Hoy's altitude record attempts, talking of a speech Hoy gave "which must go down as one of his finest achievements - it was heartfelt and generous. Just as quick as it started, the wobble is briefly brought under Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution and Moore interviews Shane Sutton, who, next to Heroes Keen, is probably the stand-out interviewee in the book. I like Sutton. Willing to call it like it is. He's one of the few guys who could say of Hoy that he has "that C-U-N-T element" and you know he means it as a compliment. The Hoy Sutton describes has edges, a rough surface. He's not the bland, perfect human he's presented as in the autobiography. He's not the charisma-free zone, the pedestal-mounted plaster saint depicted elsewhere. Sutton's Hoy is selfish, manipulative, a bit of a Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution. But nice with it. Let's start with something simple, a comment from Dave Brailsford that I find quite telling: "Some people are very quiet on doping, but I've always been open about it. We're gong to do it in-house, and if I see anything dodgy, I'm just going to phone you up and say, "Look, we know what you're doing. You can tell me about it if you want. But you ain't riding, that's for sure. Now, to me, what's most important about that comment is that Brailsford doesn't seem to give a fiddlers about getting rid of doping. He just wants to avoid possible scandal. He's happy to cover up for dopers, leave them to continue doing what they're doing - so long as he's washed his hands of them - and not help the authorities kick them out of the sport. For Moore though, what's important is pointing out that those riders Brailsford allowed to continue doping, just not in Team GB colours, were road riders with continental professional teams. Remember the important lesson kiddies: track cycling clean, road cycling dirty. Keep saying that to yourself and who knows, you might even convince yourself it's true. Moore seems to have. But just remember this: Moore himself quotes Hoy saying "There are about two or three [dopers] left in the world of sprinting. Moore also has Keen saying that "definitely, without a doubt" Hoy has beaten athletes on drugs. And Moore himself, for all he tries to suggest that the only doping problem in cycling is happening Heroes men's road racing, can't avoid referring to some of the dopers who've ridden on the track. Some of whom even got to wear GB colours. Take the case of Gary Edwards who, intested Heroes for testosterone at the national track championships, where he won silver in the team sprint. After his ban - one year - Edwards again tested positive, for nandrolone. This time he got a two year ban. But before that was landed on him, Edwards won two Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution medals at the World Masters Championships he had continued racing, having not been handed a provisional suspensiononly to test positive yet again, this time for Stanazolol, which finally prompted a lifetime ban under the three-strikes-and-you-really-should-just-fuck-off rule. Trackies, based on the examples Moore offers, seem to have recidivist tendencies. There he got busted for nandrosterone and got banned. In May he tested positive for testosterone and in November the same year Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britains Track Cycling Revolution human chorionic gonadotrophin HCG. For whatever reason, those last two offences were treated as one and Alfred landed an eight year ban. Alfred stayed in the registered testing pool, rather than retiring. But when the testers came a calling inasking for an out of competition sample, Alfred refused to entertain their request. A refusal being the same as a positive, Alfred was hit with a lifetime ban. As serious as Edwards' case was to British Cycling - it has always argued that even one doping case could endanger all of the federation's Lottery funding - there was an even more serious case, that of Neil Campbell.