A Chat With Sir Chris Hoy

This time on Faster I’m talking to the man who is probably the UK’s most famous bike rider

– Sir Chris Hoy.

Almost all of us are familiar with endurance riding. Very few riders know about the specialised world of track sprinting. How do you prepare for an event that might only last a few seconds, where the forces on bike and rider are huge and the decisions have to be made instantly?

Sir Chris tells me about training protocols so short and so brutal that the pain in the muscles keeps increasing even after the effort has finished. About how a sprinter might only ride a handful of laps of the track in a full training session, but go home broken and exhausted. And about how he used to prepare for races – watching videos of rivals, learning the people he was racing inside out so that if he had to rely on his instincts, the instincts would be right.

And we’re joined by Mehdi Kordi, the exceptional coach to the all-conquering Dutch track sprint team, who tells us about the physiology behind sprinting, how to train as a sprinter, and whether a sprinter is an animal that is born or made.

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