The name on everybody?s lips in domestic cycling at the moment is Tyler Butterfield, but it wasn?t that long ago that Kris Hedges was commanding the lion?s share of the headlines.

Yet while Butterfield has followed up his short amateur career in France by signing for a young and exciting American professional team and has his heart set on competing in the Tour de France within three or four years, his friend and one-time training partner is treading a very different path.

For a man who has dedicated his entire life to the pursuit of athletic excellence, one might have thought that turning down the opportunity of an extended professional career in cycling would have been a tremendously difficult decision.

But almost two years on and with three and a half years to go before he qualifies as an architect, Hedges is at peace with himself ? even if he admits, particularly with this year?s CD&P Grand Prix starting tomorrow, to sometimes missing the thrill of top-level competition.

?There are times when I see either Tyler or a friend of mine doing well and I think to myself ?I could be doing that?,? he said while sitting in the board room of his employer Entasis architects on Front Street.

?But when you look back on things it tends to be the good memories that stay with you ? the races that you won or did well in, the friends you made and the places you travelled to. It?s the hard winter training in the rain and the cold that you often forget!

?Another thing is that now I?ve not been cycling full time for a while, I know that I could never get back up to the standards I once demanded of myself, which helps keep things in perspective for me.?

After a long spell riding for amateur teams in the US during his time at both Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, like Butterfield, one year later Hedges moved to France in 2004 for a season with a high-profile amateur team.

While he enjoyed training and competing with VC-Pontivy, who are based in Brittany, a badly broken collar bone sustained in a training accident meant Hedges was out of action for over two months at the height of the season ? an injury that had not fully healed when he jumped into the water from Watford Bridge after that year?s CD&P Grand Prix and broke it again.

?I definitely lost a lot of momentum when I got injured and I had a lot of time to sit back and reflect on what I was doing and where my life was going,? he said.

?I had always intended to leave college and cycle for a couple of years before looking to get a proper job ? I certainly was not thinking that long-term. After my season in France, I was looking around for a professional team in the US and I had a few options come up.

?But when the main option fell through and the offers from a couple of the smaller teams didn?t really meet my expectations, I knew it was time to move on.

?I had a degree in civil engineering from Johns Hopkins, I?m Bermudian and I was fairly well-known at the time because of what I had achieved on the bike ? so I was pretty well-placed to come back to Bermuda to pursue a career in architecture and at the time when I wasn?t sure if I could take my cycling any further, it was a pretty attractive option.?

While Hedges is quick to play down his own athletic talents, he is, however, more than willing to sing the praises of his successor as the Island?s top cyclist.

?Tyler is a hugely gifted athlete and there is no reason why he cannot get to the very top if he can maintain the desire,? Hedges said.

?He certainly has the background, the genetics, and is better placed I think than any of us older guys like myself, Geri Mewett and Elliot Hubbard to do well.

?He has a fantastic engine and is a much more natural athlete than any of us ever were. He?s signed for a very young, ambitious American team (owned by SlipStream Sports) which will be a great opportunity for him to develop and improve. It will be very interesting to see how things turn out, but there is no question that from a physical standpoint he definitely has what it takes.?

All those who grew up with the 26-year-old are well aware of the strict regimen imposed on Hedges by his parents Jennifer and Robert.

While many other boys in his year at Saltus would return home after school to their televisions, comic books and Super Nintendos, Kris and his brother Trevor were frequently denied such luxuries and instead led active, achievement-strewn lives based mainly around sport.

?I guess you could say both my brother and I had a strict upbringing ? but there were always friends who had Nintendos to play and I seem to remember having a GameBoy at one stage,? he said.

?But you?re right in the sense that both my brother and I were always encouraged to get out there and do things and in a way that has carried on as I?ve got older.?

Swimming was Hedges? first love and he was quickly into the national squad at the age of ten. He walked away from the sport after a couple of years, however, when it became clear that he would have to devote himself exclusively to it if he wanted to remain in the national programme ? eventually getting heavily into running, cycling and by extension triathlon.

Clearly a cut above the rest, he was 15 when he went to his first World Junior Triathlon Championships in Cancun, Mexico and by age 17 he was easily the best triathlete on the Island.

Cycling, meanwhile, was always something he excelled at ? he represented Bermuda at the World Junior Cycling Championships in 1997 ? but it was not until he he went to Phillips Academy that he decided to move away from triathlon to concentrate solely on the latter discipline.

?It wasn?t that I enjoyed cycling more than triathlon, but it was case of there being more support for it when I first went to boarding school,? he said.

?I started racing for a team in New England and everything from the transport to the bikes was taken care of and it was very well organised and supported financially.

?There were also a lot more races going on which I liked. I was racing twice a week and sometimes more whereas in triathlon I was lucky if I could find one race a month and I?d have to do most of the travelling and cover the costs on my own.

?So I spent most of my time racing for that team in New England in my teens and even in the summer I?d be away from home for long periods of time competing in races all across the country.?

From the start of boarding school to the end of his professional cycling aspirations, Hedges competed in a bewildering array of competitions for Johns Hopkins, top amateur cycling teams in both the US and France as well as Bermuda, with the list of noteworthy achievements far too long to be printed in its entirety here.

The standouts include qualifying for the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur aged only 18, coming fourth in the 2001 World B World Championships in China and a stage win in the Tour de Toona ? a highly prestigious professional race in America where wins by amateurs remain cherished rarities.

Remarkably, despite these career landmarks as well as a string of collegiate, national and Caribbean titles, Hedges said he owed his success more to hard work than to any natural ability.

?I realised from a fairly early age that I was not that gifted an athlete,? he said.

?In Bermuda of course it is very easy to do well and think of yourself as the top dog, and I suppose by going away and competing in the junior worlds and the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur at a very young age ? even if I was probably not quite ready for the Commonwealths at that stage ? certainly opened my eyes to what was out there.

?So in the bigger scheme of things I was an average athlete really, but I worked incredibly hard and I think I managed to get the most out of what talent I was given.?

No conversation with any elite cyclist, whether past or present, can go by without reference to the drug scandals that have blighted the sport?s reputation for years ? with some sports columnists in Europe now arguing that cycling is so overwhelmed by cheats wanting to gain a competitive edge through illegal means that it no longer deserves to be given any media coverage.

American Floyd Landis? recent doping disgrace merely underlined the fact that the World Anti Doping Association?s (WADA) war on performance-enhancing drugs is a long way from being won and Hedges was prepared to admit that at the very top level, the users will more often than not be one step ahead of the testers.

Though he came across drugs frequently in amateur cycling where testing procedures are far less stringent, Hedges insists hand on heart that he never took an illegal drug in his life ? adding that he is proud of what he achieved while staying ?totally clean?.

He is keen to stress, however, that he feels WADA have consistently given cycling a more vigorous shake-down than any other sport ? something he believes is unfair and ultimately counter-productive.

?In my experience, drugs were a lot less prevalent in the US when I was racing than they were in Europe, where even in amateur racing, they are definitely around,? he said.

?What I think should be pointed out is that there is no miracle drug out there ? drugs are useless without the training and I believe that it is still a case of whoever has the most talent, whoever trains the hardest and makes the biggest sacrifices will ultimately be the most successful.

?Another thing which bothers me a little is that WADA seem to have become a little obsessed with cycling and catching cyclists red-handed, which feeds the perception that cyclists are by far the worst offenders which I do not believe is true. I do not see the same effort on WADA?s part to catch people in other sports, which is unfortunate.

?At the end of the day though, the cynic in me says that with professional sport being so competitive and with so much money at stake, it is going to be almost impossible to eradicate drugs from sport. When I was competing, the thought went through my head quite a few times that perhaps we should legalise drug taking and be done with all the deception and the scandal. I don?t know exactly how that would work, but I?m not sure the current system works that well either.

?Saying that though, one of the reasons I walked away from cycling when I did was that I could still hold my head up and say that I represented my country to the best of my ability and that I had always been clean.?

Although by most people?s standards he still runs, swims and cycles an enormous amount and while his 6ft1in frame remains fit and impressively lean, it is as a sports administrator and a manager that he is beginning to wield greater influence.

Hedges became the youngest ever chef de mission in the Island?s history a month ago in Colombia when he took a very small team of 12 to the CAC Games, while he managed the national cycling team during the Commonwealth Games in March.

He was also asked by the Bermuda Olympic Association to head the still relatively low-key Athletes Commission, who are responsible, among other things, for mediating any potential disputes between an athlete and the BOA.

For somebody who is clearly so passionate about Bermuda and the development of local sport, these are roles that he relishes and no doubt will return to if and when he comes home after completing his architecture qualifications abroad.

The small number of athletes who went to the CACs was a controversial topic at the time, with Hedges already having voiced the opinion that those Games ? though lower profile than the Pan Ams, the Commonwealths and the Olympics ? should still be taken more seriously than they currently are.

?The fact that we took only 12 athletes to an event like the CAC Games I think has to be looked at and addressed,? he said.

?For the next CAC Games in Puerto Rico in four years, we should be making a concerted effort to encourage as many sports associations as possible to put together a team because unlike the other Games, where merely qualifying and taking part is seen as an achievement, we could actually do very well at the CACs and come home with a large number of medals if we had a high number of our elite athletes there.

?Making this happen will take a lot of effort on the part of Government, the BOA and all the associations, but in my opinion I think it would be worth it.

?From my part, I really enjoyed the experience down in Colombia and it has certainly been interesting making the transition from athlete to manager. The CACs tend to be the worst organised out of all the major Games because they have far less money to spend, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how well they went, even if I had one or two problems with the language barrier! It?s certainly something that I would be willing to do again.?