Not very far, though. A lot of the trackies could be found just up the hill at the venue for the BMX event which started on Wednesday, hanging out and indulging in cyclists’ second favourite activity after riding bikes - which is looking at other peoples’ bikes.

So there you had gold medallist team sprinter Jamie Staff (a former BMXer himself) chatting away with a couple of mechanics and eying the gearing on a bike. Or Victoria Pendleton wearing sunglasses that match the colour of her medal as she did yet another interview about the previous night’s gold.

Interviews in fact are one of the more bizarre moments of the Olympics and that was especially the case in the velodrome. The mixed zone - where riders were interviewed by newspaper reporters - in track cycling was literally a couple of metres away from the Olympic podium.

So as the athletes stood there dewyeyed and staring at their national flags, if the tv cameras angles had been moved just a couple of degrees right, audiences world-wide would have seen a mass of more or less hirsuite arms waving tape recorders around their heads as they tried to capture a few moments of insight from the previous riders to stand on the podium.

This sort of proximity to cycling’s heros is one of the things that has traditionally made the sport so different - and to my mind, appealling - up to now.

But with a hugely higher profile for a sport previously labeled ‘minority’ and hopefully more financial investment too, that may all change. But it has to be managed carefully, at grassroots level - otherwise maybe it won’t be all to the good.

Look no further than road cycling as an example. The 1980s and early 1990s were the boom years when sponsors abounded and riders wages suddeny tripled. A good thing, generally speaking it was one of the poorest sports beforehand: many had to look for jobs before then in the off-season to make ends meet. But on the downside, the extra money meant more red tape getting through to the riders: we got layers of pr people to clean up the quotes and keep the journos at bay. Access was reduced. The riders got tougher to talk to, blander when you did so.

Cycling journalism got less interesting with the extra cash, and the sport’s appeal softened: not an addition, but a dilution. The prospect of big investment is a sign of the times - but the investment should be made at grassroots level.

A sign of the times of another sort was sitting on my apartment desk in the Green Homeland media village (a creepy name for a maze of 30-floor skyscrapiers, it makes the place sound like somewhere out of the Loved One) when I got in last night.

It is a piece of paper asking us to kindly inform the hotel staff when we will be dragging our weary hides to Beijing International airport so they can sort out buses for us. Home, then, is just over the horizon.