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Victoria Pendleton Interview on
Winning the Gold Medal at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
Q: How are you feeling?
To be honest for me it didn’t really feel real, it’s something you imagine in your dreams that one day
you’ll be doing that. Every athlete’s hope is to be listening to their anthem on top of the podium so when
it actually happens it was all a bit surreal.
Q: You also competed in Athens but didn’t win.
I think that without the disappointment of Athens I wouldn’t necessarily have made the change and the step
forward in my career.
It was hugely disappointing and I was ready to give up and after that year I really kind
of changed my training program, I tried to approach it in a different way and the following year I was World
Champion and since then I have maintained that position in the world rankings and I think now I feel like a
different athlete.
Q: Looking forward to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, will you compete ?
Well I’m hoping in 2012 they will bring in another women’s event and hopefully a women’s sprint event because
there is only one sprint event for women’s and two endurance events so fingers crossed there will be a women’s
sprint event and Shanaze Reade can get up and do that with me.
Q: Team Great Britain is giving an amazing performance in cycling.
We absolutely stormed the cycle rankings so there is not another nation anywhere near us so it’s nice to
know that we are the best in the world, and we are not just the best in the world, but we are by far the
best in the world!
Q: How does it feel to win gold?
Can you put that into words? I don’t think you can, I don’t think there are many things in the world for an
athlete that would come close to that feeling. It’s something completely special, completely different.
Q: You won Olympic record, tell me about it?
Well actually I was hoping to get close to the world record, my times during the week leading up to the
competition were very strong and I was actually well ahead of record schedule, but unfortunately it was
quite cold in the morning and the temperature makes a huge difference on track times.
I got an Olympic record I have to be happy with that but its something else to aim for.
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2008 Beijing Summer Olympics: Men's Cycling Gold Medalist
Having made Olympic history, Great Britain's cycling star Chris Hoy said he felt like he was in a dream.
Chris Hoy became the first British athlete in 100 years to win three gold medals in a single Olympics. During
the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Chris Hoy won gold medals in the men's sprint, the team sprint and
the Keirin event.
About Victoria Pendleton
Victoria Pendleton arrived on the cycling sprinting scene in 2001, with four silver medals in
national championships. In 2002 she completed her university studies to concentrate
full-time on her cycling for the first time.
Much to her surprise she qualified easily for England's Commonwealth Games team where she rode with
distinction in the Sprint, making the last four.
Based at the World Cycling Centre sprint school with Ross Edgar in 2003, she had a fantastic end to her
season, showing herself to be one of the very best up and coming female sprinters in the world. She narrowly
missed out on a medal the World Championships in Stutgart in the sprint, finishing fourth and looking well
worth a medal.
She then joined the exclusive sub 35 second club in finishing seventh in the 500m Time Trial. National
records were also set in both the 500m Time Trial and 200m Sprint qualifying Time Trial. She then destroyed
the opposition in winning the National Sprint, 500m Time Trial and Scratch Race titles.
In 2004 she was selected for the Athens Games and finihsed sixth in the Time Trial and 9th in the
200m Sprint.
However, a year later she finally made the breakthrough that she had promised for so long with a gold medal in
the World Championships in Los Angeles in the Sprint event. She followed that up in 2006 with another gold
(Sprint) and silver (Time Trial) at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
Victoria Pendleton saved best preformance for the 2007 World Championships. She swept all three events with
gold medals in the Team Sprint, Sprint and Keirin. Her performance in 2007 made her the heavy favorite for the
2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
About Track Cycling
Track cycling is an incredibly specialised indoor event, with a number of disciplines that place as much
emphasis on strategy and subtle technique as on physical fitness, power and stamina.
Races take place on an indoor velodrome - a 250 to 300m wooden oval, with straights banked at 12 degrees and
the corners banked at a steep 42 degree angle. The bikes and equipment used by the riders are also highly
specialised, and bear little semblance to road-going machinery.
Events include short-distance sprints, time trials and long-distance endurance races for both teams and
individuals. Depending on the discipline, the result is judged by time, by victory over an opponent, or by
completion of a distance.
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