Chelsea School Sports Science lecturer Dr Gary Brickley recently returned from Beijing as part of British Cycling’s most successful medal haul ever.
Gary coaches 3 riders; Darren Kenny, Sarah Storey and David Stone as well as assisting coaching with handcyclist Rachel Morris. At the Olympics Great Britain surpassed their own expectations and the likes of Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins became household names with their triple and double gold medal winning performances.
It was a tough act to follow for the Paralympians but after day 1 on the track the gold medals kept coming the way of Team GB. Darren Kenny, riding in the Cerebral Palsy category, was the first rider that Gary works with, to receive a gold medal after a world record winning pursuit time of 3min 36 seconds. Kenny backed that up later in the week with convincing world record performances and gold medals in the 1km time trial and the team sprint. Sarah Storey a former Paralympic swimmer also managed to win the 3km pursuit in the same time 3min 36 seconds as Darren Kenny. What made this performance remarkable was the fact that Sarah would have placed 7th in Beijing Olympics with that time. Sarah only has one fully formed hand. On the day Sarah was incredibly nervous but channeled her nerves effectively to give the performance of her life.
By the end of the week at the track Great Britain were clearly on top of the cycling medal table and the rest of the world grew tired of hearing the GB National anthem. With 12 Gold medals and one silver Team GB has surpassed their own expectations. The team had set out with a plan to get more than the 3 gold medals they achieved in Athens and were aiming for 6-8 gold medals but by the end of the track they had doubled this target.
On the road Great Britain always tend to under perform but this was not the case this year where we had the best prepared athletes in the world. Having been in heat chambers and trained in the heat of the South of France and spent time going around the course before the Games, our riders were ready for competition. In the time trial Rachel Morris, Sarah Storey and David Stone, all coached by Gary achieved gold, whilst Darren Kenny narrowly missed out on the gold by 11 seconds to former Tour de France rider Javier Ochoa. Revenge was sweet for Darren on the road race where in one of the most exciting races ever, Darren out sprinted his rival to claim his fourth gold medal. Meanwhile David Stone had added to the GB gold medal tally with a convincing win on the road race on his tricycle. So 17 GOLD MEDALS and 3 SILVER MEDALS was a fantastic achievement and for Gary to have had a huge impact in the coaching of 9 of these GOLD MEDALS is brilliant. The medal tally certainly helped to make Great Britain the 2nd overall best team in the world at the Paralympics.
Darren Kenny will be visiting the University in the near future to show off his five medals. Now all focus will be towards planning for LONDON 2012, and it is going to be very hard to beat the success of Beijing.
Business of Community Sport Conference presentation:
Download: Gary's sport conference presentation (pdf 1.44 mb)
Links to media news items:
BBC South East News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7587106.stm
The Argus: http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/3624695.Brighton_science_lecturer_joins_golden_trail/
http://www.theargus.co.uk/blogs/3661361.Day_one_of_racing/
Southern fm:
http://www.southernfm.co.uk/Article.asp?id=877364
BBC Sport:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/7606584.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/7613755.stm
British Cycling:
http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/web/site/BC/gbr/OlympicGames2008/20080905_Darren_Kenny.asp
http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/web/site/BC/gbr/OlympicGames2008/20080901_David_Stone.asp
