Having had to wait until today for the start of her BMX event, Shanaze Reade is a relative latecomer to these Games, but she is already acutely aware of the power of home support that awaits her.
Reade is sharing an apartment in the Athletes’ Village with Victoria Pendleton and Jessica Varnish, and is close enough to have sampled the noise generated a few hundred metres away at the Olympic Park on that remarkable evening last Saturday. “When Mo Farah was on, we had the TV on mute because Victoria was in bed, but we opened the doors of our apartment,” Reade said. “We could just hear the roar of the crowd, even from that far away. Everybody is feeding off the crowd, it’s going