Building towards Beijing

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British Cycling's head coach, Simon Jones.(Image credit: Shane Stokes)

The dust has settled and the medals have been put on display. The winners' lives are returning to some vestige of normality, while the disappointed athletes have either retired, or fixed their sights onto new challenges. Athens 2004 is a fast-retreating dot in the rear view mirror; time to move on.

The Great Britain track team had a strong showing in Athens 2004, with kilometre specialist Chris Hoy and pursuit rider Bradley Wiggins both taking gold medals in their events. Wiggins took two further medals, silver in the team pursuit with Steve Cummings, Paul Manning, Rob Hayles, Chris Newton and Bryan Steel and bronze in the Madison with Hayles. And while Team GB's road prospects were hit by David Millar's suspension for EPO - something he stressed was nothing to do with British Cycling - taking medals in four separate disciplines certainly provoked feelings of envy from other countries.

It is in this third area that the scene on either side of the Irish Sea differs considerably. The latter wing of the sport was identified several years ago by British Cycling as being an area with a high potential return of medals. It was able to convince - and later prove - to the government that investing in track cycling was a good way to secure Olympic and world championship success. For Cycling Ireland, though, that task has been a more difficult one.