THE British have never really taken to cycling. Tommy Simpson was something of a sporting icon before collapsing on the top of Mont Ventoux and, for a while in the 1980s, thousands were willing to line the route of the Milk Race as it wound its way around the British Isles.

But the crowds came out of curiosity, not because of the deep-rooted affection that bonds the French to one of their national sports.

Cycling has always been something that other countries do well so, when the British team took to the track in Sydney during the last Olympics, they did so without fanfare or fuss.

Seven days and four medals later, and cycling was no longer the preserve of the continent.

By helping the men's 4,000m team pursuit quartet claim a bronze medal, Stockton's Chris Newton was one of the people who helped to make the change.

The Teessider first represented his country as a junior in 1991, but had struggled for sponsorship and exposure in a career that had seen him compete in road races, time trials and track competitions in an attempt to make ends meet.

Suddenly, he was at the vanguard of a new breed of British cyclists ready to make their mark at the highest level.

Newton will be back in action when the Olympic Games return to Athens in August, taking part in both the team pursuit and the points competition.

But this time he will be part of a British cycling team expected to achieve great things.

"It's going to be a bit different this summer," admitted Newton, whose first major medal came in 1994 as part of England's silver medal-winning pursuit team in the Commonwealth Games.

"Cycling has always been seen as a bit of a minority sport in the past but, this year, there seems to be more interest and attention than ever.

"That's partly a reflection of how much English cycling has come on in the last decade or so, and partly a reflection of how well we all did in Sydney.

"The Sydney Olympics made a massive difference to the sport in this country. We were the first sport to get going and so, when we started winning medals, we got a lot of attention that we would probably have missed out on otherwise.

"Things will be a bit different this time round because we're part of the second week of competition, but people are expecting things of us now.

"We're expected to come up with the goods - but that's good because it means there's a lot of interest in how things are coming along."

Sydney changed British cycling in so many ways and, for Newton, it marked his transition from talented pretender to assured international performer.

The 31-year-old has gone from strength to strength since the last Olympic Games, becoming World Points Champion in 2002 and helping the current pursuit team claim a silver medal in last month's World Championships in Melbourne.

He booked his Olympic points spot by finishing runner-up in this year's five-tournament World Cup, an event he would have won were it not for an uncharacteristically poo r performance at Manchester's National Cycling Centre.

Athens gives him the chance to go one step further by claiming Olympic gold and, while he harbours realistic medal hopes in both of the events in which he will be competing, Newton refuses to get too ambitious.

Four years' hard work boils down to only four minutes on the track, and there are no second chances once the wheels start to spin.

"As a team we're in good health and, as an individual, I think I'm going to be going into the Olympics in the best shape I can," said Newton, a winner at The Northern Echo's 2002 Local Heroes awards.

"I've been there before, but you still go into a major event like the Olympics with a mixture of expectation and hope.

"You certainly can't go waltzing in expecting to get a medal. But I'll be going in full of confidence because of the way I've been riding this season. Last time we didn't expect to get a medal as a team. We went in hoping, and thinking it was possible, but that's different to expecting to do well.

"We hadn't been together that long and the whole thing was still a bit of an unknown.

"This time around we know we can do well and we're certainly going in hopeful of bettering what we achieved in Sydney.

"The silver in the worlds showed what we are capable of, but other teams are catching us up and there'll be no danger of complacency."

There are other events between now and August but, with the Olympics little more than a month away, all roads lead to Athens.

Or at least all tracks do. Newton's road racing days are in the past thanks to the advent of lottery funding that has given a £1.77m annual boost to the sport.

"We're a very close-knit team now," he said. "The group has been together since the last Olympics, and most of us competed in Atlanta four years before that.

"I think that continuity is important and the introduction of lottery funding has given cyclists the kind of opportunities they were denied in the past.

"We can commit ourselves to the sport now, and I think you only have to look at how the results have improved to see what a difference that has made."

It has allowed Britain's cyclists to enjoy a level of security and support they were denied in the past.

And it has enabled the likes of Newton to enjoy a profile worthy of his standing in a sport that commands fervent respect in other parts of the world.

If Newton was French he would be a national hero. Olympic gold would mean, for a day at least, he knew exactly how that felt.