It will be Beijing calling, rather than London, for Chris Hoy and his Great Britain team-mates as Team GB's track cyclists expect to dominate the 2008 World Track Championships.
Since the Athens Olympics, at which Hoy won an Olympic gold medal, the British team has established itself as the leading power in world track racing. The Beijing Games may be a little over four months away, but the next five days of racing present a final opportunity for Team GB's athletes to assert themselves over their most dangerous Olympic rivals.
Justifiably, after winning seven world titles in last year's world championships, the mood in the Great Britain camp is upbeat. The Scot's pragmatic switch from the kilometre time trial to all-conquering keirin specialist epitomises that drive and ambitious mood.
Hoy's Olympic aspirations, despite the unceremonious dumping of the kilo from the Olympic programme, remain intact. The 32-year-old from Edinburgh is now focusing his efforts on three disciplines, the individual sprint, the team sprint and the keirin, in which he can win world and Olympic medals.
"The loss of the kilo from the Olympic Games was frustrating," Hoy said. "I do miss it, but with it not being in the Olympic programme, I have to focus on events that are."
If being deprived of the defence of his Olympic title didn't faze Hoy, then neither did last week's fall while training on the Manchester track. "I had a bit of a tumble after a motor-paced effort," he said. "I was riding around and the back tyre blew out, which, if it had happened 15 seconds earlier, would have been disastrous.
"If you start thinking about what could happen, it's not very pleasant, so the important thing is to get patched up and get back on the horse," he said.
Nobody at British Cycling seemed overly concerned. Perhaps that is because a Hoy tumble, pre-championships, is now something of a tradition. At the Athens Olympics, Hoy crashed in the athletes' village but picked himself up and went on to win a gold medal only hours later.
Not for the first time, Hoy will lead Team GB by example, in today's three-man team sprint. As the last man of the trio racing against the clock, he will ride the crucial final lap. It will be another pressure-cooker moment for an athlete who seems to thrive on stressful situations.
"It is going to be a real battle, particularly with the French, but there are also the Aussies, the Germans, the Dutch and others," he said. "I just hope that with the home support, our familiarity with the track, the fact that we're very much in the ascendancy with our form, that we do win gold."
Hoy will be supported by an experienced British team, who can realistically claim to have medal contenders in every discipline and gold medal potential in many others. In the individual and team pursuit, Athens Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins will be the key player, and the Londoner, despite recent illness and the death of his father, remains bullishly optimistic, both of his own chances and of Team GB's hopes as a whole.
"I am going as fast, if not faster, than I have in the past," Wiggins said. "We the team haven't been in a position like this for a long time or been this confident going into a major championships," Wiggins said.
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