Legends of Yesterday: Shane Kelly always wanted to do things the right way

In truth he was four when his father – Colin –  and his older brothers – Paul, Dean and Jamie – first got him on a bike.

“From the day I was born I really was around bikes and racing,” Kelly said.

“It all progressed from there because I just wanted to be as fast and as good as my brothers.

“It was just a normal sibling rivalry.”

His competitive nature and passion for sport was evident from an early age. He said if he was not cycling he was at sports like tennis, squash or netball, which his mother – Jan – preferred.

“I can’t ignore the huge influence mum had on me,” he said.

“I was always just surrounded by sport.”

By the age of eight his competitive edge had developed even further.

He said he remembered travelling to an annual race in Melbourne where the first prize was a bike.

“Before I knew what incentives and goals really were, that is what I was setting myself for,” he said.

“I wanted to race there and win.

“I think between me and my brother we picked up about 12 bikes from those races.”

That was also the time his Olympic dream started. At the age of 17 in 1989 he was offered a scholarship to attend the Australian Institute of Sport in Adelaide.

“I had always trained but it wasn’t until I got to Adelaide that I really found out what training was about,” he said.

“It was very professional and regimented.

“The intensity and the volume of work was what really stepped up.

“It took a commitment not only physically but mentally as well.”

He said Wayne McCarney and Dean Woods acted as early mentors for him once he had arrived in Adelaide.

McCarney won a bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics while Woods had claimed Gold at the 1984 Olympics as well as two more medals in 1988.

He would later pick up a bronze at the 1996 Olympics as well.

“Wayne was from Colac and Dean was from Wangaratta and my brothers had raced against both of them,” Kelly said.

“They were two guys who were really good for me.”

By 1991, Kelly had claimed his first Australian Championship in the Kilo. He was then selected for the Australian Olympic cycling team that would compete at Barcelona the following year.

“The training load for me leading into that year was 30,000 kilometres, which is a lot for a sprint cyclist,” he said.

“You could compare it to a 100-metre runner doing marathon training.”

He said when he finally got told he was going to Barcelona it was a dream come true.

“Going there was amazing and it was hard not to be overwhelmed,” he said.

“The Olympic village was bigger than Ararat.

“There were more people there, there was more to do, more entertainment and more everything.

“You could easily get lost in all the hype and everything that was going on and forget that you were there to compete.”

Kelly’s pet event, the 1000 metre time trial, has traditionally been one of the very first medal decided at the Olympics.

It meant he missed the opening ceremony – which he was unable to attend at any of his five Olympics – but that he did not have to wait long to compete. 

Once on the track his training immediately paid off.

“I did a personal best by a little bit more than two seconds,” he said. “I couldn’t have gone better, it put me in the gold-medal position.”

In the time trial event, cyclists take to the track one at a time in order to try and record the best time possible. Kelly had a nervous wait after moving into a gold-medal position with nearly half of the riders remaining.

“One-by-one the big guys weren’t beating my time,” he said.

“There were past Olympic and World Champions that I’d read about in magazines and they weren’t able to beat my time.

“Then all of a sudden I’m in a medal-position and the wait while I watched them all go off made me very anxious.”

Eventually José Manuel Moreno took to the track as the final cyclist and he was able to better Kelly’s time by a little under a second.

“I was so close but that experience was unbelievable, unforgettable and the start of my Olympic journey,” he said.

It would be the closest Kelly would get to an Olympic gold medal in five attempts before retiring after the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

He collected bronze medals in Sydney in 2000 and at Athens in 2004. 

Amidst three consecutive world championship triumphs from 1995 to 1997, Kelly may have been best prepared for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Unfortunately a false start and a slip of the foot cost him his chance.

“Since I was often one of the first races it was up to me to set the standard,” he said.

“It was only in 1996 that I wasn’t able to do that but my teammates have since told me the way I dealt with that still set the bar high.”

His ability to deal with adversity was something Kelly said he believed shaped his career.

“A lot of people talk about winning but I think how you deal with disappointment is also very important,” he said.

“I learnt that from a young age while riding around the Wimmera and in Ararat.

“It’s about how you carry yourself despite disappointment and how you come back for the next challenge.” 

His determination to overcome adversity was best highlighted when he won his 1997 World Championship in Perth.

With all of his family trackside, Kelly was able to overcome a number of injuries to claim his third straight world time trial championship. 

He said if the championships had not been on home soil, there would have been a chance that he would not have even competed.

“I’d been injured and I was unfit almost to the point of pulling out,” he said.

“I just wanted to have a crack because it was in my home country. In the end I won but I probably shouldn’t have because physically I wasn’t on top of my game but mentally I wanted it so much.”

During his journey Kelly had formed close relationships with others who had competed at multiple Olympics such as the Oarsome Foursome, members of the Hockeyroos and swimmers such as Michael Klim.

“Going to the Olympics is such a unique thing and you form a bond with those you saw there every four years,” he said.

After his retirement in 2008, Kelly said he found it difficult to find the next thing that really excited him.

“After living in that elite bubble for twenty years it was hard to adjust,” he said.

“But then in 2011 my wife - Matti Clements – and I had twins and that ignited my fire again.”

For the past five years he has been a coach at the Victorian Institute of Sport.

He will head to Switzerland for the junior world championships with the likes of Ararat’s Alice Culling in August.

“It’s nice to have that connection to back home,” he said.

“I’m excited to be heading over for that.”