LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

Great Britain were favourites for most of the track events at London 2012 — but the men’s team sprint was one race that they were not expected to win.

Despite boasting Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny in their trio, preparation for the Games had been bereft of victories and they were regarded as unlikely contenders.

The might of France with Grégory Baugé, and the Maximilian Levy-led Germany, were predicted to contest the first of 10 golds inside the velodrome.

But a young Owain Doull had listened to positive stories emanating from the camp. “I would hear snippets of how everyone was going, but it was like Chinese whispers and by the time it got to me it would have been blown completely out of proportion,” Doull, a member of British Cycling’s Academy Programme at the time, tells Cycling Weekly.

Yet he had heard enough to back his mate Phil Hindes