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"Post Olympics after winning the medal, I thought I’d made it in terms of financial rewards but we made nothing from the Olympics.
"In 2001 I became disillusioned and wanted to spend the least amount of time on the bike. Chris Hoy suggested I change from second man to first as he wanted to concentrate on the individual events. I agreed as it’s easier to train as man one because you just need to be strong, which means less time on the bike in training.
"It sounded like the easiest option at the time, but of course if you want to do something properly it’s never the easy option. But the change meant that everything fell into place for the team."
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He went into 2004 hoping to better his silver medal at the Olympics but a viral infection destroyed his year’s training and made him forget plans of retiring at the end of that year. He made it to Athens and rode both the Kilo and the Team Sprint but performed well below his best and finished seventh in the individual event. He found the whole experience frustrating.
He recalled: "It was the type of thing that you felt you were recovering and you would have a couple of good weeks and then suddenly you felt as if you hadn’t trained at all.
"I didn’t have bad form when I entered the games but I wasn’t at my best and finished seventh in my event which isn’t disaster by any means but it was pretty poor for me.”
And so MacLean is now looking forward to the Team Sprint at the 2008 games.
"I still feel I’ve got unfinished business at the Olympics and I want to leave the sport with some good memories rather than thinking what might have been.
"The Olympics is the pinnacle for pretty much every sport as its so high profile. It’s nice to be World Champion and it is more competitive because the qualifiers eliminate a lot of riders but the Olympics is only once every four years so you don’t get to do it very often."
However MacLean chances of winning a medal have been halved through no fault of his own after the Olympic committee decided to replace the Kilo with BMX racing.
He said: "I just don’t understand the logic of it. Someone who is obviously not a fan of track racing has taken the decision as the sport has had to lose two events for BMX."
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