Cycling's Queen Victoria

Preparations for the track cycling at the Olympic Games are reaching fever-pitch. In the build-up to the five days of racing beginning on the middle Friday riders will be pedalling furiously around the velodrome in a last attempt to shave off those extra hundredths of a second that could be the difference between gloom and glory.

Victoria Pendleton, however, will be putting her feet up. Like the rest of her colleagues in the most successful national team in world track cycling, Britain's golden girl will be putting her faith in the process they refer to simply as "the taper". As competition approaches, the 27-year-old from Hertfordshire will spend some days doing no serious training whatsoever.

The theory is that rest enables the body to rebuild, so that when you get back on your bike you are stronger than ever. The practice was evident in the world championships at the Manchester Velodrome earlier this year. Of the 18 gold medals on offer British riders won nine – including two for Pendleton – and they go to Beijing holding the world titles in seven of the 12 Olympic events.

"You have to have 100 per cent faith in the taper," Pendleton said. "I think a lot of other countries traditionally do too much training in the days before competition. Stopping goes against the grain, doesn't it? Your big moment's approaching yet you're doing less work and you don't know how you're going.

"But the taper's been proven to work scientifically and it's worked for me in the past, even though I still have doubts two weeks out. I have all these panicky thoughts: 'Oh, gosh, I'm not going to get there, it's not going to happen!'

"You just have to tell yourself: 'Relax. There's no reason why this shouldn't work.' You have to buy completely into it because amazing things happen. If I have two days' rest, I can go half a second faster than I was in training. And half a second on the track is massive."

Pendleton stopped her gym work nine days before the world championships. With six days to go she spent two days off the track completely; with four days remaining she returned for two days of practice; and finally from two days out she took another two days off. The result? Gold in the sprint, her Olympic event, gold in the team sprint and silver in the keirin, in which she was caught close to the line in the final race.

"Between the time I began to taper and the start of the championships there was an absolutely phenomenal change in my performance," Pendleton said. "I probably only hit the speeds I hit at competition in Manchester on two days in the entire year – perhaps only on one day in a non-Olympic year. In training, I won't get anywhere near those times. I'll be flying because I haven't got the fatigue in my legs through training. Normally it's full on, full gas all the time. I'm in a constant state of fatigue. My legs always feel tired.

"When you come into a taper, you're not damaging your muscles as much. Suddenly they're recovering at a much faster rate. And then finally, on those last couple of days, your body just has a chance to go: 'Whoah! Here we go!' But literally, up until those last two days of rest, you have no idea you're going to be going that fast. You just have to believe it's going to happen."

Pure speed is one thing but the sprint, one of the classic track cycling events, is much more than an all-out dash for the line. After an initial time trial to decide the starting order, the competition goes into a knockout phase, with two riders racing each other over three laps of the track. For at least the first two laps they play cat-and-mouse, sometimes slowing to a standstill. The trailing rider will attempt to attack out of the other's slipstream, while the leader can win crucial time by making the first surge for the line.

Pendleton is the acknowledged queen of sprinting. At the past four world championships she has won gold, silver, gold and gold, while her hat-trick of golds last year – in the sprint, team sprint and keirin – earned her the Sports Journalists' Association's sportswoman of the year award.

She admits the one-on-one nature of the sprint can be "absolutely gut-wrenching", explaining: "You can go into the race knowing that you were the fastest in the time-trial, but that doesn't mean you're going to beat your opponent. Far from it. One tiny mistake and you might lose.

"If I look over the wrong shoulder in my first round, one stupid decision like that could mean it would be all over for me. I could be the fastest rider and make one little wrong decision that would cost me everything. There's no chance for a second attempt."

Pendleton knows the psychological advantages that can be gained on the start line, as she found before her final against China's Shuang Guo at last year's world championships. "I was looking across at her and she couldn't make eye contact with me," Pendleton remembered. "I was trying to put over the image of someone who felt totally in control and relaxed. I was looking at her, but she was looking as though she thought it was all over. It was quite comforting for me. I felt: 'This is mine. She's given up. She's settled for second already.'"

Although Pendleton grew up in a cycling environment – her grandfather was a competition rider as is her father – and was talent-spotted by British Cycling at 16 she did not turn full-time until she had taken a sports science degree. Two years at a specialist sprint training school in Switzerland under the direction of Frédéric Magné, a former world champion, brought swift progress and in 2003 she finished fourth at the world championships.

Nevertheless, in the following year Pendleton twice came close to quitting. "When I finished fourth at the 2004 world championships, before the Olympics, I felt that I hadn't progressed," she said. "I felt I didn't want to be doing something that I wasn't improving at. I didn't want to do something at which I was only mediocre. At the time being fourth in the world really frustrated me. I felt I was wasting my time."

Worse was to follow as Pendleton went out in the first round at the Athens Olympics. "I hadn't anticipated the intensity of the situation in every aspect and as a consequence I under-performed," she said. "Afterwards I just cried and cried. I kept asking myself: 'What am I doing? Why am I doing this?' I was extremely close to quitting."

The man who helped put Pendleton back on track was Steve Peters, a forensic psychiatrist working with the British team. He helped restore her confidence and within seven months she was wearing the world champion's rainbow jersey.

"When I met him, I knew I needed somebody to help me," Pendleton said. "I was struggling. I was really unhappy with myself, my life. I was very depressed really. I wasn't clinically depressed or anything, but I felt really rubbish in my life and unsuccessful. I was just spiralling down. I'd cry about anything. I needed somebody to step in and just give me a hand out of that hole. He came along. Within minutes of meeting him, I just thought: 'I've met someone who knows what I need.'"

British Cycling has left no stone unturned in its quest to scale greater heights. Dave Brailsford, the performance director, has put the team at the forefront of technology and medical science, but the fitness and training regime requires complete dedication from the riders.

Pendleton has made it clear to her boyfriend that her sport comes first. "I'm totally fair and square," she said. "I've told him: 'This is my situation. If you can't handle it, I'm sorry, because my priority at the moment is the bike over you.' That's because it's only a short part of my life. It may sound heartless, but that's the reality of my situation."

Brailsford has also gone for the best when hiring back-up staff. Jan van Eijden, a German former world sprint champion, joined the coaching team last year and has been working closely with Pendleton.

"I believe I've got the best guy available in the world working with me," Pendleton said. "We searched high and low. When Van Eijden suggested he was retiring from racing, I think about three nations tried to recruit him. He wasn't the strongest rider, but he'd got a long way by just being very smart. He's got a lot to offer in that respect. The work I've done with him has really given me confidence.

"When I started track racing, I did not know what I was doing. I'd get all this information in one ear – 'give the gap, lay off, don't do this, push if you're at the front, squeeze out the bends, don't go too high, look over your left shoulder, look over your right shoulder' – but I would get on the start line, the whistle would blow to start the race and I'd be thinking: 'What am I doing?' Now I really feel I know how to go about things.

"Jan's taught me all sorts of tactics, like forcing me to look only over my right shoulder and not to look forward until I commit. That's a hard thing to do. He actually said one day as he was riding behind me on the track: 'You must look at me all the time. If you look forward, I'll crash you'. It worked." The British team have pushed nutritional science to the boundaries. The riders consume large amounts of fish oils and cherry juices, though Pendleton says she likes eating healthily.

"Maybe I'm just vain, but I really enjoy keeping my body in good condition," she said. "Coming from a sports background, I know what I should and should not be eating. But I don't ever deny myself cake or chocolate, because I know I'll burn off the calories because I work so hard.

"If I feel like eating fish and chips, I have fish and chips, though obviously I wouldn't do it a day before a big training session. It's a great situation to be in. How many females are lucky enough to be in my position where they can eat what they want and stay in the shape they want?"

Pendleton raced in the Beijing velodrome in the World Cup at the end of last year and despite crashing in the keirin she liked the venue. "It's got long straights and tight bends," she said. "It's a very fast track. It's steeper than Manchester. From a sprinter's point of view it's really fast because you can pick up a lot of speed coming down from the top of the track.

"It's virtually impossible to overtake on the bends, but you have such a long straight that a lot can happen over that distance. The finishing line is a long way down the straight – much further down than Manchester – so your timing is really crucial. If you're at the front you really have to hold on and accelerate towards the line. There are a lot more opportunities to overtake in the straight than on most tracks."

Pendleton believes pollution will be a factor. "A lot of the competitors [at the World Cup] were struggling, particularly in the endurance races," she said. "Afterwards everyone was coughing like they were smokers. The pursuiters often get a tickly cough anyway because of their riding position and because they breathe so hard, but by the third day of competition everyone was coughing as if they'd been smoking 40 cigarettes a day. The only thing I can attribute that to is the atmosphere. Even I was coughing and that's unusual for me.

"When I got up after I fell one half of my body was covered in black because the track was so dirty. You always get dust on a track no matter how much you clean it, but it looked as though somebody had been rubbing it with charcoal. When I slid along the track on my side I was completely black."

Over the next fortnight, however, there is only one colour that will be on Pendleton's mind: the gold of the medal she hopes will be hanging round her neck after the sprint final on 19 August.

FACTFILE

VICTORIA PENDLETON: Born 24 September, 1980, Stotford. GB debut in 2002. Won gold in the Women's Sprint at the 2005 World Track Championships in LA.

GOLD FEVER: Won gold in the Women's Sprint at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Took three golds in the 2007 Track Championships as well as a further two Golds and a Silver in this year's event.

BEIJING EVENTS: Women's sprint.

Interesting? Click here to explore further