ROAD TO THE OLYMPICS
CHOOSING who you want on your football five-a-side team always leaves those picked last disheartened. Just imagine if that was how selection for the Olympic Games was decided. “Let’s just say that preparation for 1996 was shocking. It was non-existent,” Rob Hayles remembers. “They even asked us to select the team. It was like, ‘Really?’”
Olympics, local kick-about with your mates. Same thing, right? “Talk about taking the pressure off the coaches,” Hayles adds. “We were at a training camp somewhere and we were all sat around when Doug Dailey [former national coach at British Cycling] walked in and said, ‘Right, you guys decide.’ Each rider wrote down their own list of who should go and then they counted the names up and said, ‘This is the team you have selected.’ It was decided on that day and that was the
