Two gold medals were on offer on day one of competition at the velodrome in the men's and women's team sprint races. Both British teams set world record times that would have advanced them to the gold medal race and guaranteed at least a silver medal under normal circumstances. Despite a controversial incident in their first round, the British men produced a brilliant display in the final to thrash world champions France and snatch gold. But the British women were relegated to last place in their second round and missed out on the medals.
Let's take the British women's team of Jess Varnish and Victoria Pendleton first. Why were they relegated? In the women's team sprint, the two riders on the team start at the same time and complete two laps, with the first rider (who sets the pace on the first lap) peeling off as that lap ends. At the end of the first lap, the first rider must still be ahead of the second rider when they both cross the line. If the second rider has already overtaken the first rider, that constitutes an illegal change and the team is relegated to last place in that round of the competition. The equivalent situation in athletics would see a relay team disqualified for completing a baton change after the end of the change box. In this case, Pendleton had already overtaken Varnish by the end of the first lap. The margin was extremely small and the commissaires officiating the race do have some discretion in applying the rule, but replays confirmed that their decision was correct. In the gold medal race, China also performed an illegal change and were therefore relegated to last place in that round, taking silver instead of gold as a consequence. While we naturally feel extremely sorry for Varnish and Pendleton - Varnish because that was her only event, and Pendleton because this is probably her last competition - they accidentally broke a rule and should be treated the same way as any other team.
Turning to the British men's team of Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and Chris Hoy, we need to start by describing what happened in their first round. Hindes' bike seemed to come out of the start gate at a strange angle and he wobbled about for a few metres before falling to the track. The commissaires decided that this was a mechanical failure and ordered a restart. The team (and particularly Hindes) rode superbly three times after that and won gold.
So far, so good. Nothing controversial about that, you might think. If anything, performing so well after the shock of an unfortunate mechanical failure makes their achievement all the more impressive, doesn't it? Well, perhaps not.
When asked about the incident by the BBC's Jill Douglas straight after the final, 19-year-old Hindes answered that he had crashed deliberately. He explained that the team had planned for a poor start and decided that he would crash to make sure that a restart was awarded. Or, in his words: "I crashed, I did it on purpose just to get the restart, just to get the fastest ride. It was all planned really." So let's be quite clear about this. There was nothing wrong with his bike and he decided to try to void their first attempt to give the team another chance to record a better time. This wasn't simply a case of exaggerating a mechanical problem to attract the attention of the commissaires: there was no such problem. Hindes dived.
At the team's press conference after collecting their medals, Hindes told a very different story after what we can only assume was a crash course in media training. He denied that he had deliberately fallen and claimed that he had simply lost control. Hindes was born in Germany and only moved to England to join the British Cycling academy in October 2010. Perhaps inevitably, the official line distributed by British Cycling was that Hindes' post-race comments were somehow lost in translation.
Based on Hindes' initial response and reported comments from other teams, we'll proceed on their assumption that he crashed on purpose. By the letter of the rules of track cycling, no rule was broken and the commissaires acted correctly. So while we might feel that Hindes' actions (which appear to have been dictated by the team) were morally wrong because they were designed to gain an unfair advantage, sanctions could not have been imposed. The other teams have all accepted the result of the event (though the French team has called for the rules to be changed in future) and the governing body has confirmed that the result cannot be reexamined.
Now, we don't believe that the crash necessarily affected the overall result. It happened in the first qualification round, where the best eight times advance to the second round. Based on the expected performances of the other teams, we think Team GB would probably still have qualified comfortably even if Hindes had followed through with his bad start and completed the ride. But what if Hindes had felt the need to crash in the second round, or even in the final? In any case, we just wish Hindes hadn't been asked to crash so we could focus on celebrating the team's stellar record-breaking performances in later rounds.
Two races. Two actions which resulted in an unfair advantage for British teams - one accidental, one deliberate. The former was punished, the latter was not. In our view, the strategy which seems to have been employed by the British team would not be accepted in any other sport. Imagine the farcical scenes if every other team also decided to crash if they thought there was any chance of producing a better start second time around. Track cycling rules must be changed to ensure that the sport does not descend to the level of public contempt and irrelevance that Olympic badminton has recently achieved.
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