Four-time Olympic champion Laura Trott has expressed annoyance over the questions posed by rivals about British cyclists’ extraordinary performances at the Rio Games.
Trott won two gold medals and her fiance Jason Kenny claimed three golds as Team GB stormed to the top of the cycling medals table with six goals and 12 in total.
Britain won nine medals at this year’s World Championships in London, having won only three silver medals at last year’s event in Paris, prompting rival cyclists to question their improvement.
But Trott, 24, told BBC radio: “I’m not angry as such, but it is a little bit annoying and frustrating because it is a lot of hard work that has gone into that performance.”
Australia’s Anna Meares and French sprint coach Laurent Gane both said the British cyclists’ success in Rio was hard to understand.
Germany’s Kristina Vogel called it “questionable”.
Trott added: “British Cycling has always been very much an Olympics-based programme, so for us it wasn’t about clearing up at the World Championships.
“Don’t get me wrong, it would have been nice because they were in London, but it’s always been around the Olympics.
“That’s what our funding is pushed towards, that’s where they spend our UK Sport money.
“If we’d come away and under-performed 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.” With four gold medals in total, Trott is Britain’s most successful female Olympian.
