It might not have been the medal he had hoped for, but with silver around his neck, Dan Bigham acted out the denouement of one of cycling's most inspiring stories, one that almost saw the curtain come down early.
There was a moment last Friday when the 32-year-old feared his Olympic dream was over. It happened in an open training session, inside the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome on a sunny morning. Bigham had gone eight years without crashing on the track, until he swung up in a team pursuit change, and collided with another rider who was rolling around higher up the boards. Both fell hard and slid down onto the apron.
