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      It helped that I knew Emma Davies, the pursuit rider, and I hung out with her as often as I could. But, still, there were many days in Athens when I’d wander into the food hall on my own and have a little inner crisis about where, and with whom, I would sit. My first Olympic Games was a fraught experience. Considering the dark place I had occupied just a few months earlier, it could hardly have been different. But I was still shocked by how consuming the Olympics were in comparison to the World Championships.

      I had been selected for two events: the 500m time trial and the individual sprint. On the Friday afternoon of 20 August 2004, in an Olympic velodrome as searingly hot as it was intensely pressured, I climbed on my bike just after 3.30. I had spent all my time in Aigle preparing for the sprint and so the time trial would merely be a prelude. Unlike in the sprint, where I had two successive fourth-place finishes in the Worlds, I was not really expected to compete for a medal in the time trial.

      The beeps started. I held the bars tighter and took a deep breath. I put my head down and, my mind turning blank, I rose up out of my saddle. And, then, I began to race. I pedalled and pumped my legs as I hurtled around the track. The colours and sounds flattened into one long blur of painful movement.

      I flashed across the line in 34.626. I had taken the lead in a new British record; and I began to breathe again as I circled the track more slowly.

      My first ride as an Olympic cyclist was over, and applause rolled down the steep banks of seating. Only six riders were left. If four of them were slower than me I would win an Olympic medal. But, even amid the hot glow of competition, I was realistic. The quickest time trialists in the world were about to race.