LITTLE at the national track cycling championships in Manchester could have reminded Chris Hoy of Beijing, except the one thing that really mattered — the sound of the ticking clock. Anybody expecting a low-key return to competitive action by the knight of the track had not understood Hoy’s psyche.

On Thursday, he broke the lap record for his home track, clocking 9.9sec in qualifying for the sprint, which he won comfortably. The next day, his last lap in the final of the men’s team sprint was the second-quickest of his life: 13.08sec — a time bettered only by his gold-medal performance in Beijing. Last night, he claimed his third title of the week in the Keirin.

No wonder Dave Brailsford, the head of British cycling, is wearing a broad grin. Although his focus has shifted to Team Sky, Britain’s new Tour de France squad, Brailsford has instilled a mentality in the national squad that has clearly survived a turbulent post-Olympic year. “It was tough, because after Beijing every event seemed like a step down,” he said. “But that’s gone now, everyone is buzzing again. You can feel it here. This has been the best attended national championships I’ve seen. Believe me, it used to be a man and his dog.”

Yesterday, on the fifth day of the championships, Hoy, inset, had just completed his qualification for the Keirin when the sound of carbon hitting wooden boards caught his attention. The result — one broken bike and one shaken rider — must have reminded the four-time Olympic champion of his crash in Copenhagen in mid-February. Hoy was off the bike for 10 weeks, nursing a hip injury, and out of competition for much of the year, which gave the national championships an important place in his rehabilitation and in his preparation for the first World Cup event of the season in Manchester next weekend.

“It’s one thing knowing you can do good times in training and another to actually do them on the track,” he said. “It’s important for me to know I can do it, but it’s also important to remind my rivals round the world that I’ve not gone away. A few people assume that Beijing will be the best I could do, that I might hang on for a couple of years to bask in the limelight and then retire before the next Olympics. But that’s not something I’ve ever envisaged. This is an exciting time for the whole team. I train with a lot of the young guys and they’re improving every day, but I’m improving too.”

Hoy’s intelligence and eloquence have made him an obvious candidate for the celebrity circuit. The recent publication of his autobiography made further claims on his time, but any suggestions that he might have mislaid his racer’s instinct in some television studio have been emphatically answered.

“My only concern — maybe concern is too strong a word — was whether he would be able to balance the workload,” said Jan van Eijden, the men’s sprint coach. “But we talk about it, and the good thing is he listens. He’s 33, he knows his body well and what he needs to do and he’s raring to go. You’ve seen it here. It will take a good guy to beat him.”

Equally encouraging for the future of the squad was the performance of Matt Crampton, well beaten in the sprint final but still clocking times a mere heartbeat outside 10sec. Geraint Thomas, a member of Team Sky, was in equally commanding form in the longer races, which augurs well when the other nations come to town, while Victoria Pendleton, the Olympic and world champion, dominated the sprint events. Having taken the individual sprint title, she was pushed all the way to the line in the Keirin last night by Rebecca James, one of the new generation of young sprinters.

“My form has been pretty good this week, better than I expected,” said Pendleton. “But I’m being pushed pretty hard, which is great. There’s no room for complacency.”

Typically, the British team have also taken a gamble in anticipating changes to the programme for London 2012. In a push for gender equality on the track, the International Olympic Committee is likely to ratify five events — the individual sprint, Keirin, team sprint, team pursuit and the omnium — for men and women, a total of 10 gold medals. The new balance of the programme leaves Rebecca Romero, the Olympic champion in the individual pursuit, without a title to defend, and gives Mark Cavendish no chance to make up for his disappointment in Beijing in the Madison.

Romero, who left rowing because she wanted to compete on her own, is set to switch to the road time trial. The omnium, track cycling’s equivalent of the heptathlon, will be the one new event.