Another good night in the velodrome... probably the highlight of the olympic program for me, the 4000m team pursuit. And, no, not because of the result... The Team Pursuit was probably the reason I got into competitive cycling - though I never actually rode the event myself.
(bear with me, some of the details may not be quite 100% accurate, we're dealing with my memories from anything up to 48 years ago here...)
One of my earliest memories, was sitting in my grandads living room, watching the 1968 Mexico Olympics (it had to be at my Grandads... we didn't have a telly back then, and my Grandad had rented one just before the olympics...) Sitting on the floor, in front of the tiny little screen, watching these two teams of 4 men whizzing around a little loop, trying to catch each other, taking turns on the front then flying off up the banking to drop back in again at the back for another turn. It was enthralling and I was, at the age of 5 already hooked.
1972, Munich, and the only thing I could remember about the Olympics was the Bike Racing. 9 years old and pleading with my mam and dad to be allowed to stay up and watch the racing. Success... And this was the year with the "big showdown" - East vs West Germany... Thinking about it now, the Semi-Finals must have been quite intense for people of my parents/grandparents age who'd lived through WW2 - think about it, East and West Germany, Poland and GB... I wasn't quite as nationalistic - I liked the East German team - think it was the fact that they were MASSIVE blokes in steel-grey kit - they LOOKED like some kind of superheros (strangely enough, we pretty much found that they had something in common with lots of super-heros - chemical intervention causing the superpowers, but I digress...)
So - amazing racing, and West beat East for gold/silver, GB beat Poland for Bronze... disappointing for my family, but riveting for me.
1976, Montreal, and we'd finally got Colour TV! And again, the only thing I wanted to watch in the run up to the games was the Velodrome. I'd got my first "proper" bike by now... 13, and I'd done allsorts of stuff to get the money for it - got peoples coal in, mowed lawns, helped the farmer stack hay-bales - all the kinds of stuff that these days would get you shot for child worker exploitation really, but back then just "showed some gumption" in me... Quarter finals - GB beat Poland again, just like for bronze 4 years before, east and West Germany had easy wins, but the Russians CAUGHT the italians... amazing. GB were seeded 4th and had to take on West Germany in the semi finals,(we lost that round, and were in for the bronze-run-offs...) while (my beloved silver - I still had a soft spot for 'em) East Germany were up against the Russians... Looking back, you can almost imagine the drugs dripping out of those 8 guys on the track back then... The russians won - setting up a final ride-off of West Germany vs Russia for gold/silver, and GB against East Germany for Bronze. For me it was a no-lose situation - but the rest of the family didn't see it that way, so it was a good thing really that Ian Hallam,Ian Banbury, Robin Croker, and Mick Bennett did the business and beat the east german team by a fraction of a second.
That was it. I was hooked on bike riding - I rode whenever, wherever I could, I got a saturday job at my LBS (sweeping up and making tea mainly...) to fund my next bike, and at 14 I joined the local bike club... I raced as a junior on the restricted gears, and found I was pretty poor at massed start stuff, but I could ride against the clock pretty well... Only times I did anything in a road-race was if I got into a break and stayed away - and every time that happened, the rest of the people in the break beat me for the sprint... But I got some points and progressed a bit. But I WAS half reasonable as a tester...
Now, the wrong side of 50, 25 years or more since I've been a "clubman", and well off the pace for competitive cycling, I still love riding my bike - and I've been told by at least 3 medics that the cycling I've done has saved my life when I had a health scare nearly a year ago... I owe so much to cycling, but mainly my life and sanity!
And it all stemmed from that 5 year old sitting in front of his Grandad's Rented Telly, watching a bunch of men ride around and around in circles.