 On Tuesday evening, Victoria Pendleton couldn’t hold back the tears. Despite the disappointment of her defeat by Australian Anna Meares in the final of the Women’s Sprint, the British cyclist departed the sporting spotlight still retaining the class and elegance that she displayed throughout her whole career. “I’m grateful to cycling and to everyone who enabled me to live the extraordinary life that I’ve lived until this evening,” she said. “Every moment of it has been really fantastic and I’ll never forget the feelings that I’ve experienced and the people that I’ve met. I will definitely keep all these memories very close to my heart. But I’m keen now to start a new life.”
Meares paid tribute to her rival who had beaten her at the Beijing Olympics before their positions were reversed this week. “She will be greatly missed in cycling. Four years ago, when I was standing on the second step of the podium, I looked at Vicki with her gold medal and thought that I’d do everything I could to beat her here in London, but I knew that it wouldn’t be easy. We’ve been rivals for many years and have experienced some tense moments, which is completely normal in sport, but we’ve always respected each other.”
On the subject of her own future, Meares made no secret of the fact that her priorities will be different from now on: “I need to take a break for me, my husband, my family and my dog. I want to go back to living a normal life, at least for the next year. After that, I might decide to come back.”
Chris Hoy: “There’s a huge amount of work behind all this”
After four years that were “incredibly hard and difficult and which may sometimes seem even to be a low-key culmination,” Sir Chris Hoy also mentioned that he needed to call it a day. This man, who yesterday became the new legend in British sport with his six gold medals won at three different Olympics, felt the need to highlight the sacrifices that were made to provide the springboard for his success: “All I’ve done is eat, train, recover so that I can train more and sleep. People might think that what we’ve done throughout this week is fairly normal. We were expected to win and we’ve done it. However, there was no miracle involved in all this, no magic wheel, just a huge amount of work.”
Hoy stressed again the efforts made by everyone. “I’m proud of our results, and especially of the new attitude that we’ve helped establish within British sport. We looked at what the others were doing and we’ve done it even better. Admittedly, we used every means possible, but most of all our desire and determination.”
Which of all his medals does Sir Chris regard as his finest? “There’s a big difference between those I won at Athens and Beijing and those that I’ve just won this week. Here we felt as if we were part of something much bigger, even magical.”
The Commonwealth Games, which will take place in Glasgow in his Scottish homeland in 2014, are still some time away. “I don’t know yet if I’ll be there,” Sir Chris says, with some hesitation. “I might like to, but two years is a long time. Today I want to rediscover what it’s like to be an ordinary person like everyone else, free to walk until I drop alongside my wife in a shopping centre.”
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