A quick guide to keirin racing

We've reached the final day of competition at the velodrome, and there are still medals up for grabs in the men's keirin, women's sprint and women's omnium events.  Victoria Pendleton is chasing her second gold medal of these Games and has reached the semi-final stage of her quest to retain her Olympic sprint title - you can still find our handy guide to the sprint here.  Meanwhile, world and Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy is the favourite for the keirin and has safely qualified for the second round.  We've dug up and dusted off our hypothetical moron to help explain the finer points of the keirin for you.

Hello again!  I've really enjoyed watching all these British stars at the velodrome, and I saw Victoria Pendleton win the women's keirin a few days ago.  Not for the first time, I didn't have a clue what was happening.  Help!

OK, calm down!  What do you want to know?

Well, what does keirin mean, for starters?  I think I drank a beer called keirin once.  Is it named after that?  Do they all get drunk first?

Keirin just means "racing wheels" in Japanese.  The beer is called Kirin, and it's named after some kind of mythical deer-dragon-unicorn chimaera.  Racing wheels.   Mythical deer-dragon-unicorn chimaera.  Racing wheels.  Mythical deer-dragon-unicorn chimaera.  Two different things.  Got it?

I think so.  But if it's a Japanese pastime, where are the teenage girls and the octopus?

Er.  Yes.  I'm not sure.  If it helps, you can imagine them watching excitedly from the stands.

Oh, it does help, trust me.  *awkward pause*  So... what's the basic set-up in a keirin race?

The race lasts eight laps or 2,000 metres, and the winner is the rider who crosses the finish line first.  On the start line, six riders line up across the track in positions determined by drawing lots.  As the starting gun fires a motorized pacing bike called a Derny rides past the start line at a speed of 30km/h, and the riders set off and form a straight line behind it.  The Derny gradually increases the pace until it reaches its top speed of 50km/h, and pulls off the track with about 600 metres to go.

It might help to think of a keirin race as being divided into two separate phases.  In the first phase, the riders line up behind the Derny and try to secure the best position to apply their chosen tactics for the final sprint.  In the second phase, the Derny pulls off and the riders start to sprint for the finish line.

How does the first phase of the race work then?  Can the riders overtake the Derny?

The riders can't overtake the Derny, but they can overtake each other.  The positions of the riders in the line behind the Derny will primarily be determined by any extra acceleration that they decide to apply in riding away from the start line.  Once the riders have lined up behind the Derny, it's quite difficult (but by no means impossible) to overtake another rider without doing so dangerously and breaking the rules.  Trying and failing to overtake could also mean that the rider ends up further back down the line than they started as gaps are quickly closed by the other riders.  Riders will often leave little gaps in the line to give themselves more room for manoeuvre (so they can respond to attacks from behind or put more effort into their own attacks later in the race), but any such gap cannot exceed 10 metres.  Most riders prefer to ride in the first few places behind the Derny, but Chris Hoy for one has consistently shown that keirin races can be won from anywhere.  The tension slowly builds as the pace of the Derny increases, and reaches a crescendo as it pulls off the track.

How does the race change when the Derny pulls off?

Once the Derny pulls off, the proper racing begins and the riders sprint for the finish line.  There are two main dangers that the riders will be keen to avoid.  The first is getting stuck on the inside of the track surrounded by other riders and not being able to start their final sprint at the crucial moment.  The second is getting stuck at the back of the pack and being forced to take a longer route around the other riders.  At these speeds, either problem could cost a rider any chance of winning a medal, so careful positioning is vital.

Does that mean that the best strategy is to ride immediately behind the Derny and start sprinting flat out as soon as the Derny leaves?

Not necessarily, no.  Some riders with better sprint endurance than their rivals might try this - Chris Hoy might well do so tonight.  However, as we explained for the sprint event (and as Anna Meares showed in the women's keirin final), this is a high-risk approach as the rider creates a slipstream which their rivals could use to launch an attack if they can catch up.   Just like the sprint, there's no one-size-fits-all strategy that will always work best.  No rider would use the same strategy for every race, not least because their rivals would know exactly what to expect.

Could we see thrills and spills?  I like thrills and spills!

In a word, YES.  With six sprinters jockeying for position at up to 75km/h on a sloped track, it's not surprising that crashes, relegations and disqualifications are very common in keirin racing.  The riders will often be forced to use their shoulders and elbows to defend their position, and the slightest touch of wheels could unceremoniously scatter the whole field across the track.  It's a much more physical event than you might expect, and anything can happen.

Chris Hoy is by no means guaranteed to stay upright, let alone to win his record-breaking sixth Olympic gold.  If we had fingers, we'd be crossing them hard.  But if all goes to plan, Britain might well end the day with a staggering total of eight golds from ten track cycling events.

A quick guide to the track cycling sprint

The track cycling is well underway at the Olympic velodrome, and, judging by all the questions we've received, it's got you all thoroughly baffled.  We've probably left it too late to fully explain the omnium, as we'd have needed to start several weeks before the Olympics.  But the sprint competitions and men's keirin are still going on.  Taking the sprint event first, this is what you need to know.

Jason Kenny rides for Great Britain against multiple world champion Gregory Baugé in the gold medal race of the sprint competition in the next few minutes - so you'll want to pay attention to see whether Kenny can win Britain's 18th gold of these games!  Meanwhile, Victoria Pendleton is progressing smoothly through the women's draw and should be battling for gold tomorrow.

Let's start at the beginning.  In the sprint, the two riders are drawn in lanes - one in the sprinter's lane near the inside of the track, and the other higher up.  For simplicity's sake, we'll call them the top and bottom riders.  The starting position for the bottom rider is slightly further forward than that of the top rider, so they will be expected to lead out the race.  Simply put, the first rider to cross the line at the end of three laps wins the sprint.  It's a "best of three" format at this late stage of the competition, so the first rider to win two sprints will take gold.  Both Kenny and Baugé won their semi-final rounds 2-0.

While the format of the event is very straightforward, the tactics are a little more complicated.  There are no restrictions as to when a rider can start to ride at full speed, so you might expect that either or both riders would choose to ride the full three laps flat out, challenging the other to respond.  However, just like athletics, sprinters are not usually built to maintain speed over long distances, and this would be a very risky strategy because the responding rider could use the other's slipstream to catch up and eventually overtake.  Bear in mind that riding in the slipstream of another rider can reduce the effort required by up to 50%.

Instead, you're much more likely to see the riders play a drawn-out game of cat and mouse.  Apart from the effect of slipstreaming, the two crucial points to keep in mind are that riding around the centre of the track means covering a shorter distance, and that using the shape of the velodrome by swinging down from the top of the track will increase a rider's speed.

Let's look at tactics in a little more detail.   It's impossible to say what the "best" tactic would be for any given race, so we can only try to explain how a typical race might shape up.  The bottom rider will usually ride most of the first two laps looking over their shoulder to keep an eye on their opponent.   The top rider will try to sneakily gain as much height as they can compared to their opponent, in order to increase the burst of acceleration they can produce when they eventually decide to start their sprint by swooping down.  The bottom rider will try to mark the top rider's moves by staying close to them.  The bottom rider can try to force the top rider's hand by steering them up to the top of the track as slowly as possible, removing any possibility that the top rider could swoop down and capture the initiative by overtaking.  Equally, if they see that the top rider is hanging back to give themselves more room to work with, the bottom rider could put in an early burst of speed to try to gain an advantage over the top rider.  In an ideal world, the top rider would manage to start their sprint while the bottom rider's back is turned, giving them a slight advantage and propelling them to take the shortest and quickest route around the track.

Without going into technical detail, it's worth remembering that riders can be disqualified for bumping and barging each other to try to secure a better position on the track.  However, you might still see the bottom rider sticking their elbows out to make themselves a slightly bigger obstacle, as the margins in this event are so small that this can decisively increase the distance that the top rider would need to cover to overtake.  Crashes do happen, and when they happen at this speed, they happen hard.

The sprint will usually start with a little over a lap to go.  As soon as either rider puts in a decisive acceleration, the other must respond as quickly as they can.  At that point, it's a straight race to glory at the finish line.  With races frequently decided by photo finishes and thousandths of a second, this is definitely the most exciting event to watch at the velodrome.  So tune in, don't blink, and enjoy it while it lasts!

Welcome to the velodrome: how track cycling has changed since Beijing

I wrote a little piece on my blog a couple of days ago to try to answer a few questions about the differences between track cycling at Beijing 2008 and track cycling at London 2012.

Why can't Chris Hoy ride in the individual sprint?

Where have the individual pursuit and madison events gone?

And why won't Great Britain be able to emulate their success from Beijing, no matter how many world records they break?

All the answers are here.

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The Olympic track cycling has just started at the velodrome. It's a beautifully designed building and a fitting tribute to all the success that our cyclists have achieved since the state-of-the-art Manchester velodrome was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Great Britain won seven gold medals, three silvers and two bronzes on the track in Beijing, including three golds for Chris Hoy and two for Bradley Wiggins. To put that into perspective, we won seven of 10 events and 12 of 30 medals available. Of our entire track cycling team, only Mark Cavendish failed to win a medal, and (as most of you know) he's since become the most successful road cyclist in the world. That's an astonishingly dominant performance by any measure. Even more so when you consider that the prestigious men's 1000m race - at which Britain's Jason Queally and Chris Hoy had won the previous two Olympic golds - was surprisingly cut from the Olympic programme prior to Beijing.

Repeating that performance was always going to be a difficult task, especially with several other countries increasing investment in the sport to try to catch up. But changes introduced by the UCI (the sport's governing body) at the behest of the IOC have made it an impossible one.

Firstly, each country can now only enter one rider or team for each event. This immediately means that no country will ever emulate our Beijing feat of winning more medals than there were events. The main headache this created for the GB selectors was who to pick for the men's sprint, since Jason Kenny and Chris Hoy would both be favourites to win medals. The selectors have picked Kenny on the basis of his better recent form, so Chris Hoy cannot now defend one of his three Olympic titles. As mentioned above, this is now the second time that Hoy has been prevented from defending an Olympic title.

Secondly, several events have been cut from the Olympic programme. This is an unfortunate consequence of the admirable objective of enabling women to compete in just as many track cycling events as men. Rather than adding women's equivalents of the existing men's events, the UCI have been forced to remove some events to avoid increasing the total number and thereby diluting the value of a gold medal (as the IOC would see it). The men's madison has been cut, along with the men's and women's individual pursuit events (previously won for Britain by Chris Boardman, Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero) and the men's and women's points races. These events have been replaced with the women's team sprint, the women's team pursuit, the women's keirin and the men's and women's omnium races. For those of you new to track cycling, the omnium is a hexathlon of disciplines aimed at rewarding all-round cycling skill where competitors tackle a short time trial, a flying lap race, a points race, elimination race, pursuit race and scratch race.

It's worth remembering that these changes are great news for some riders - Victoria Pendleton now has the chance to ride for three gold medals rather than one, and to translate the staggering dominance she's exhibited at recent World Championships into the Olympic arena in front of an adoring home crowd. But it's a real shame that administrators couldn't have found a way to retain traditional events such as the individual 1,000m and 4,000m races while also introducing long overdue equality. Even taking into account that there are also a few mountain bike, BMX and road cycling events at London 2012, it must be pretty devastating for track cyclists to see swimmers and track and field athletes competing in 34 and 48 events respectively. I'm certainly not arguing that any sport should be structured to ensure that Great Britain wins as many medals as possible. I'm arguing that the sport should be properly represented at the Olympic Games, and that we should be able to see athletes competing to become Olympic champions in the most prestigious track cycling races.

In short, don't blame Team GB's track cyclists when we fall short of our Beijing medal tally. Blame murky manoeuvrings behind the curtain of sporting politics.

Track cycling day one: a tale of two rules

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.