Sunday, September 17, 2000
Cycling News Online
QUEALLY STEPS OUT OF THE SHADOWS
UNEXPECTED VICTORIES SOMETIMES THE SWEETEST OF THEM ALL
QUICK SPRINT TO SILVER

Queally steps out of the shadows

If it happened, if British glory came, it was supposed to be down by the harbour, in the lee of the Opera House where Simon Lessing was competing in the triathlon yesterday morning as short-priced favourite. That was where the spotlight was, in postcard Sydney, amid the flotillas of small boats that bustled their way beneath the Harbour Bridge and in the sunlight and shadows that danced through the Botanic Gardens.

Instead, as Lessing toiled without reward, the quiet men of the British team were preparing a surprise. Out in the south western suburbs among the squat, whitewashed wooden houses and wire fences and the cars parked askew on the grass verges, a little-known cyclist called Jason Queally was busy bursting into the national consciousness by becoming the first British competitor to win a gold and silver medal at a single Olympic Games since Sebastian Coe did it in 1984.

The gold came on Saturday night in the men’s 1km Time Trial when Queally, who had been tipped -rather generously, most people thought, as an outside bet for a bronze medal - suddenly shattered his own personal best to beat the Olympic record and relegate the world champion, Arnaud Tournant, of France, into fifth place. “It hasn’t sunk in,” Queally said. “I saw the words 'Olympic Record’ on the screen and I thought 'it can’t be me’. Then I realised it was true.”

Last night, Queally, 30, stood and watched as the Union Jack rose above the banked curves of the Dunc Gray Velodrome once again. This time, it was a silver medal for the man from Lancaster who once worked as a barrow boy after he and his two teammates in the men’s Olympic Sprint, Chris Hoy and Craig Maclean, were outpaced by France over three laps in the race for gold. His achievement, though, was that on the first weekend of the Games he had equalled Britain’s entire gold medal haul from Atlanta four years ago.

Queally is an unlikely hero. He still seemed stunned by his new-found celebrity last night. His medals clanked together as they hung down around his neck, a constant reminder of what he had done, but when someone asked him whether he had had any early discussions about sponsorship deals since his gold medal success, he smiled awkwardly. “I have no idea how these things work,” he said.

He admitted he had heard only "sound-bites" of the reaction to his success in England. He said he had heard an announcement had been made at half-time in the Everton-Manchester United match at Goodison Park on Saturday. More than that, he did not want to know. “It is going to take me some time to understand exactly what has happened here,” he said.

In one respect, though, Queally is easy to recognise. One section of the in-field of the indoor arena is divided into a series of pens that make it look like a cattle auction and the riders use them to park their bicycles, which cost about £6,000 each and are made of carbon fibre, and prepare for their races. When Queally sank bank into his seat after the first heat of the Olympic sprint yesterday, he stripped off his top to reveal a jagged scar zig-zagging across his lower back.

Four years ago, Queally was taking part in a race in Meadowbank when he fell under the wheels of his competitors’ machines and was speared by an 18 inch sliver of the wooden track. The spike went through his back and penetrated his chest cavity and the doctors said that he would have died if it was not for the strength of the chest muscles he built up when he was a swimmer. He recovered quickly enough to ride at a big championship some months later but the accident has left him with lasting psychological damage.

He still refuses to take part in races that would pit him side by side against other riders. When someone asked him the reason for his reluctance during his press conference last night, Maclean stepped in first. “Because he’s chicken,” Maclean said. There was plenty of laughter at that but Queally did not disagree. “He’s right,” he said.

“There’s no getting around it. I still don’t like the idea. I suppose I had post-traumatic stress disorder for a small period of time but the nightmares and the flashbacks have stopped now. I have never raced in a group since then but maybe I should do it again some time.”

Queally’s dislike of company on a 250m track that rises so sharply at both ends that it looks almost sheer when you stand at its foot, meant his two weekend triumphs were essentially solitary affairs. The 1km time trial is a flat-out four lap sprint with no-one else on the track. It is a race against the clock, an effort of intense concentration and unrelenting sprinting that makes the chest feel as though it is going to explode.

Last night’s event was a variant on that theme. It was a team event, raced over three laps, with three riders a team. All three started the race side by side. Pedalling furiously and perilously close to each other, Hoy peeled off after the first lap, barking encouragement to the other two as they hurtled past him. Maclean moved over after the second lap, leaving Queally to complete the race alone, three laps in less than 45 seconds. Second best to the French all night, Britain never really threatened them in the climactic gold medal race.

Much of the credit for the success in the Velodrome was given to the influence of funding from the National Lottery. According to the terms of the contract, Britain had to achieve a specific medal tally at these Olympics to ensure that funding was maintained. “It was two bronzes this time around,” Queally said, “so we’re home and dry.”

Oliver Holt
The Times

Unexpected victories sometimes the sweetest of them all

Britain may not win many gold medals here but when they happen, the victories often come unexpectedly, projecting ordinary competitors into sudden prominence as heroes and heroines. Jason Queally is the latest gold medal-winner to enter this pantheon, only the second Briton to win a cycling event at the Games since 1920. Chris Boardman's supreme fitness and revolutionary bicycle brought him the individual pursuit title in 1992.

As far back as the 1924 "Chariots of Fire" Olympics, Britain produced men such as Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, who were capable of seizing the moment to excel and defeat more favoured opponents. As the Biblical quotation on Eric Liddell’s grave in China put it: "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary."

Abrahams had not been expected to win the 100m because the Americans fielded such celebrated sprinters as the defending champion Charley Paddock, who used to leap at the tape at the finish. However, Abrahams recorded the fastest times in the preliminaries and then swept to victory in the final.

Liddell’s triumph in the 400m was even less predictable as he had never previously beaten 49sec and only ran because the 100m final was on a Sunday. As a devout Christian, he refused to enter the event, switching to the longer race where he set an Olympic record of 47.6sec. After being carried in triumph wearing a crown of leaves through the streets of Edinburgh on his return, Liddell devoted his life to missionary work in China, dying in a Japanese internment camp in 1945.

Britain owed much in this era to Oxbridge athletics and their joint club, Achilles, of which Abrahams was a member. This continued in the 1936 Games when many of the team had been to either Oxford or Cambridge. Britain took the 4 x 400m title, upsetting the Americans despite one runner, Godfrey Rampling, the father of film actress Charlotte, admitting that the preparation was so casual that during baton-changing practice "we soon got bored so we packed it in". But they did not pack it in when the final took place.

Britain had to wait 20 years for another athletics gold medal. In Melbourne, another Oxbridge athlete, Chris Brasher, who previously had best been known for pacing Roger Bannister to the first sub-four minute mile, took the 3000m steeplechase as the British third string and rank outsider. In the same Games, Gillian Sheen unexpectedly won the women’s foil after finishing only fourth in her semi-final qualifying group.

The 1964 Games were the most successful for Britain in athletics but two of the gold medals, those of Ann Packer in the 800m and Lynn Davies in the long jump, were not predicted. Packer had only been third in her semi-final and, as she had already won silver in the 400m, had even contemplated spending the afternoon shopping in Tokyo. However, she was so distressed by her fiance Robbie Brightwell failing to get a 400m medal that she vowed to do her best and won in an Olympic record.

The conditions were awful for the long jump but they upset Davies, who had trained in similar conditions in Wales, less than his opponents such as Ralph Boston, the defending champion from the United States. When the wind dropped, Davies produced a UK record of 26ft 5.75in.

Mary Peters was not tipped to win the pentathlon at the 1972 Games. She had finished fourth in Tokyo and ninth in Mexico and was 33-years-old. She also faced Heidi Rosendahl, the world long jump record-holder and a magnificent all-round athlete, in front of her German crowd. However, Mary produced her greatest competition and broke the world record after setting a personal best in the 200m, the last event.

Even more unexpected was the victory by the modern pentathlon team at the 1976 Olympics. Jim Fox, Danny Nightingale and Adrian Parker were lying fifth before the run, the last of the five disciplines. It was Fox’s last competition and with some epic running that no one whoever saw it will ever forget, the Britons snatched the gold medal from the Czechs.

It is this type of unquenchable spirit that propelled the unfancied Searle brothers, Greg and Jonny, to defeat the Abbagnale brothers in the coxed pair at Banyoles in 1992. The Italians had not been beaten for six years but the Britons, guided by their cox Garry Herbert, attacked in the last few hundred metres, winning by over a second. Greg felt a little guilty at beating such renowned rowers: "Suddenly, they looked very old. I could tell how devastated they were."

John Goodbody
The Times

Quick sprint to silver

Jason Queally made it a double celebration as the cyclist added a silver in the Olympic sprint to his golden success in yesterday’s 1km time trial, securing Britain’s third medal of the Games.

Along with Scots Chris Hoy and Craig MacLean, the Lancashire rider anchored the team to their third sub-45sec performance of the night in the final. The British trio recorded 44.680sec but lost out to French rivals Laurent Gane, Florian Rousseau and Arnaud Tournant, who justified their favourite status by taking gold in 44.233.

Earlier, the trio had improved their heat time of 44.659 to 44.517 in the semi-final, but were unable to improve on that in the final. Hoy, savouring the capture of a silver medal, said: "You’ve got to believe you can do it but, until you actually achieve it, it doesn’t sink in."

MacLean, who competes in the sprint tomorrow, said he would delay his celebrations. "The beers are on hold tonight," he said. "I’ve been waiting six months for this so I can wait another night."

Queally revealed how determined he had been to follow up his success in the 1km time trial with another medal-winning performance in the sprint. "I struggled to sleep last night and I’ve been on a high since yesterday," he said. "I just wanted to do my best for Chris and Craig. I knew they were in very good form and I didn’t want to let them down.

"I was feeling a bit tired today but I tried my very hardest. It was not quite good enough to beat the French but we’ve got a silver and we’re very pleased with that."

McLean added: "The lead-up to the final has been great, especially with Jason winning yesterday. That inspired us. Last year was our first major championship medal (silver in the world championships) and that was very special but this is just incredible."

The Times