"Obviously there are hard days when it's a real struggle. Training is painful and monotonous by nature, but I always give every session 100% effort. There is a huge sense of satisfaction in completing a session well."

There is also, he admits, no place for complacency. He might be a previous gold medal winner, but there are seven good riders going for three possible places riding for the UK in each of the various sprint events at Beijing. But the Olympics is the main aim for Chris, although his preparations were affected somewhat by the announcement that his favoured event, the 'kilo' (1,000m time trial) was being axed - supposedly to make way for new BMX events being given Olympic status, a decision tinged with irony given Chris started out on his cycling path on BMXs.

In place of the kilo he is concentrating on the Keirin, an event in which he is the current World Champion, as well as contesting for a place in the individual and team sprint events. And while the training will be similar in many ways, the events are different enough, and require subtle enough differences to the particular training, that it's unlikely he'll have another tilt at the 1,000m world record.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that in amongst the gold medals. In 2007 Chris had a crack at that particular world record, missing out by a fraction (0.228 seconds), but still meaning he has ridden two of the three fastest times in history at that distance. To make up for it however he did actually set a new world record for the 500m flying start, taking over second off the previous best time.

.lying in wait - dave swarbrick

This is all building up very impressively indeed, especially for a lad from Edinburgh who started out, as mentioned above, racing BMXs. Mind you, he was damned good at that as well - racing from the age of seven to fourteen he found himself as Scottish Champion, British number 2, 5th in Europe, and 9th in the world. Is there any sort of cycling that this guy can't excel at?

Well actually the nswer to that comes when I ask if he's ever considered following fellow track luminaries like Chris Boardman and Bradley Wiggins out onto the road. Chris knows exactly where his talents lie: "Brad and Chris aren't sprint athletes and competed in track endurance events so it's not really possible to draw comparisons. For me to ride the road would be like seeing a 400m runner try a marathon. You could liken Brad and Chris to Paula Radcliffe; she does the track distance events but also marathon"