Trott irked by whispers of GB skulduggery
LAURA TROTT admits to being “annoyed and frustrated” at seeing Great Britain’s cycling success at the Olympics questioned by rivals.
GB cyclists claimed six golds, four silvers and one bronze at the velodrome in Rio to follow up a similarly impressive haul on home soil four years ago.
With Britain’s overwhelming dominance at recent Olympic Games being in contrast to some of their performances at other major events, several rival teams publicly wondered just what was going on.
The veiled accusations that something amiss might be taking place has offended the likes of British Cycling head coach Iain Dyer, and Trott is also frustrated.
The 24-year-old, who won two golds in Rio to match her haul from London 2012, said: “I’m not angry as such, it is a little bit annoying and frustrating because it is a lot of hard work that has gone into that performance.
“British Cycling has always been an Olympics-based programme, so for us it wasn’t about clearing up at the World Championships in March of this year.
“It’s always been around the Olympics. That’s what our funding is pushed towards, that’s where they spent our UK Sport money.
“So for us it was about performing there and I think if we’d come away and underperformed at the Olympics, we’d have been gutted if we’d cleaned up at London because it would have meant we’d have peaked at the wrong time.
“I think what a lot of other nations don’t know, and what they don’t see, is the fact that it doesn’t really matter about the World Championships. It’s all about the Olympics.”
Trott’s fiance Jason Kenny was another member of GB’s all-conquering cycling team this summer and he took his collection of Olympic gold medals to six having also also tasted success in Beijing and London. Between them, Trott and Kenny won five gold medals in Brazil and find themselves at the centre of attention following their return to the United Kingdom.
Trott said: “Being at the Olympics is really weird, it almost feels like a Big Brother house, you’re kind of isolated from the outside world.
“You don’t really feel like anybody’s caring, so to land back and at Manchester it was ‘Wow, people really do care about this’.”