It takes a towering talent to put in a performance that redefines a discipline at Olympic level. Ed Clancy has done it three times.
A trio of team pursuit gold medals stand as a monument to Clancy’s dominance of the four-man event, each earned with world records.
The Yorkshireman has broken the team pursuit world record a total of seven times and is a bona fide British cycling legend.
As part of Team GB’s Moments That Made Me podcast, Clancy spoke to Radzi Chinyanganya and told him about the moments that have come to define him as an athlete.
The full conversation is available on the Moments That Made Me podcast, in association with the University of Hull, and is available on iTunes, Google, Spotify and SoundCloud.
Simply search Team GB wherever you get your podcasts from and you’ll find the Moments That Made Me podcast.
Moment One - First call-up to British Cycling Academy
In 2003, an 18-year-old Clancy was sitting in his front room in Holmfirth, Yorkshire, filling out an application form for a student loan.
He was planning to study civil engineering at Loughborough University and racing bikes when time allowed. A single phone call changed all that.
Clancy’s phone rang and it was National Development Team Manager Simon Lillistone, offering him a place in the first intake of the British Cycling Academy.
“I knew I had a chance of making the academy but it was an outside one,” said the 35-year-old.
“As a junior, I was alright at riding bikes but I was never anything standout. No-one would have picked me out as an Olympic gold medallist or anything like that.
“I was hassling Simon all week and when told me I was in, I was happy. I threw my student loan application in the bin along with most of the possessions I had.
“My neighbour at the time was doing DIY in his kitchen and had a hire skip and within a week almost everything I owned went in there.
“I got picked up by one of the British Cycling coaches and went off to Manchester for a couple of years.”
That first intake featured Mark Cavendish - who has won it all in the sport, including Olympic omnium silver - and the Academy would later rear Geraint Thomas and Ian Stannard.
Clancy was on the road to realising his Olympic dream.
Moment Two - London 2012
Nine years later, Clancy took to the start line to lead out Great Britain in the final of the team pursuit against Australia at the London 2012 Olympics.
Britain were reigning Olympic and world champions, but Australia were always pushing hard and claimed the world titles in 2010 and 2011. The media piled in on ‘cycling’s Ashes.’
He describes the hours before an Olympic final in searing detail.
“Every time you’re on your feet, or go down stairs, you’re thinking, ‘is this going to detract from my performance?” he said.
“Even if you’re having conversations with people, you think ‘am I wasting emotional energy here?’
“As soon as you cross that line and it’s all over, you’ve gone from being in a thoughtful, tense place to a place of not caring about anything.
“Someone could break into your house and nick your car and you wouldn’t care. You’re invincible, it’s like a superpower. You really ride that high.”
Britain broke the world record for the second time in 24 hours to the unbridled joy of a home crowd, generating an atmosphere of which Clancy has never seen the like before or since.
“I’ve been to busy velodromes before but the atmosphere in the arena in 2012 was electric and once-in-a-lifetime,” he said.
“You could feel it in the air. I’d never felt anything like that since and nothing’s been quite the same.”
Moment Three - Back injury
From the high of London, three short years later Clancy was brought to his knees in the Tenerife mountains.
Then with five European and five world titles under his belt, Clancy suffered a prolapsed disc in his back, aggravated by bending down to pick up a bag at the 2015 Tour of Britain.
He went through epidural injections and was given no end of painkillers but they couldn’t stem the tide of pain that led him to having ‘foot drop’, motor function impairment in his leg.
With eight months to go until he would defend his title in the Rio Velodrome, Clancy was in the operating theatre and contemplating the impossibility of a run at the Olympics.
Rather than resetting with a fully-fit squad, the team doubled down on getting him to Brazil, a leap of faith that affected Clancy deeply - and was repaid with another gold.
“I would have forgiven them if they’d told me ‘Ed, we’ve got to concentrate on these four guys.” said Clancy.
“But nobody gave up on me, which is nice. It’s hard to put into words what that means.
“For people to put their heart and soul into getting the team back up and running - even with a lingering doubt in their minds that we could do it - shows what goes into getting medals.
“Behind every gold medal, there’s an army of people who’ve helped you. It must be a matter of 1,000s of people who help get you there.
“I think that’s why Olympians are always happy for kids to take their medals and play around with them. They know that so many people have contributed to this.”
Sportsbeat 2020