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When climbs onto his bike in Manchester for this weekend's World Cup, he'll have a weapon on his side that is the envy of all his rivals.

It's not his carbon fibre bike, or something he's eaten, or some new trick in training that has somehow produced even more power in those famous quads.

The weapon is a mild-mannered 56-year-old chap from the north-east of England who, by his own admission, knows "next to nothing" about professional cycling and has never once cycled round a velodrome.

Steve Peters is the British team's psychiatrist, the of cycling. He has variously been described as a "genius" (Dave Brailsford) and "the reason I am riding today" (). "Without Steve I don't think I could have brought home the triple golds from Beijing," Hoy has said.

"I do get phone calls from cyclists in the middle of the night," laughs Peters. "But at the end of the day, that's what I'm here for. I can catch my sleep up some other time."

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