Sir Chris Hoy keeps focus for battle on home front

Rather than traffic jams, the major current obstacle for the four-time ­Olympic champion lies rather more directly in his eyeline in the form of his room-mate in the capital, Jason Kenny.

Following a change in regulations from the last Olympics when Britain dominated on the track, a new one rider per nation per event rule means Hoy and Kenny, two of the world's best sprinters, are vying for one vacant individual sprint at the Games.

The dominance on track in the event has ebbed and flowed between the pair, and they effectively have two rehearsals to prove their credentials for Games selection, starting with the World Track Cup event, which gets under way on Thursday night, and at the Track World Championships in Melbourne in April.

For Hoy's part, he insists - and the sentiment seems genuine - that he is not thinking too strongly about his inter-Team GB rivalry with Kenny.

"There are so many riders out there that you can't afford to think about anyone but yourself," said the Scot, who lost to Kenny in their head-to-head at the Manchester Velodrome last month. "You've got three or four French riders, it's the same with the Germans, the Dutch, Malaysians.

"We [Jason and I] both have our strengths - we both know what we want to do and that's it. It's not really that big a deal at the moment as there are so many other people who we are racing against. There is a very good chance we could race each other this weekend or at the World Championships but it's about concentrating on our performances and making sure we are in the best shape of our lives because we aren't racing ourselves.

"If you start worrying about other people then it's detrimental. If I focus on myself, I have a good chance of winning and that's what I intend to do."

One thing the 35-year-old is focusing on now is getting used to the nuances of the Olympic velodrome.

He took to the banked velodrome at the Olympic
Park for his first proper training session yesterday and admitted that, even without the 6,000 sell-out crowd for every session, it already had a "special atmosphere".

However, Hoy said: "It feels like a foreign venue, there are a lot of foreign guys there who are not familiar to you. But it's about turning up and making it feel like it's our venue, it's our ­territory."

For Hoy, who begins his World Cup campaign in London on Friday afternoon, and the other British cyclists, the push for 2012 begins in earnest this week with the leading teams sending their top squads to the World Cup.

Hoy added: "From the first training day, you can tell that it is more than just a World Cup. This is a proper marker for the Olympics."