The Olympic Games is big business, and big business invests in performance. Team GB cycling received £35 million of lottery funding for the Paris Olympic cycle; its riders train and race full-time, and are supported with facilities, coaching, medical, physiological, technological and psychological services. It’s a stark contrast to the first British cyclists to compete in the Olympics, who did so because the Games were close to where they lived.
The first modern Olympics took place in Athens, Greece, in 1896. Edward Battell and Frederick Keeping were keen cyclists who worked at the British Embassy in Greece, and with only 19 competitors to race against, across seven cycling events, they both won medals: Battell a bronze in the road race and Keeping a silver in the 12-hour race.
I’ve not been able to find any information about how they trained, but it’s unlikely they did much at all. Nobody trained hard in those days, as the reports on Keeping’s silver medal event testify. It was a 12-hour track race, and out of seven starters only he and the gold medallist, Austria’s Adolf Schmal, lasted until the end. The rest dropped out before three hours, and Schmal and Keeping were reportedly in a terrible state after
