Keeping buns toasty … the adidas-designed pants. The British team was well into trialling the pants at the time of the world championships in Melbourne three months ago, but did not wear them at Hisense Arena in order to protect their intellectual property, which was four years in the making and a collaboration between British Cycling, Loughborough University and designer adidas. The technology was kept secret until the eve of the Games, after British cycling coaches saw the potential for marginal gain if athletes' bodies could be kept warm until the final seconds before racing. Scientists proved the clear benefit in maintaining the temperatures cyclists typically build up by pedalling stationary bikes on the velodrome floor, but which they are physically unable to maintain themselves in the period that they sit down to compose themselves before hitting the track. ''I think this will become part of track cycling. Especially after seeing how athletes have taken to wearing them,'' Esme Taylor, a physiologist with the British cycling team who has worked on the development of the pants, told Fairfax.

''They see these as part of their warm-up now ... and for us that shows how good they are.'' Members of the British track team have been experimenting with the pants for the past 18 months and, now that it's too late for rivals to attempt to replicate them, are providing ringing endorsements. Britain's leading female cyclist Victoria Pendleton feels the extra piece of team uniform will raise her performance levels for the Games. "They heat up almost instantaneously, they're just amazing. You really feel the temperature on your quads and hamstrings and it really makes a difference," she said in London on Sunday. "You have to work with cooling ... but for me as a sprinter I've got lots of short events spread out during the day so it's essential that my muscles maintain temperature."

Udo Mueller from adidas's innovations team said the technology could be useful in games like soccer and other winter sports, particularly for substitution players. Meanwhile, Pendleton claimed that Anna Meares takes the psychological edge into one of the most hotly-anticipated battles of the Games. The 2008 Olympic sprint queen, Pendleton beat Meares for the world title in the discipline at the track world championships in Melbourne three months ago. The result prompted the Queenslander to confess that her great rival Pendleton would go into a home Olympics with an even greater advantage. But the British champion disagreed yesterday, rationalising that Meares's performances had been more consistent than her own and that her world title came after judge intervention. ''I would say that she probably has the advantage going in because her performances on the whole over the past 12 months have been a lot more solid than mine,'' Pendleton said. ''I had that one occasion at the worlds, although some of it was down to the discretion of the commissaires so it wasn't purely based, necessarily, on performance. So I actually say that Anna has the upper hand now because of her consistency over the past 12 months."