I knew that at my age I was likely to miss out on selection for London 2012; then I was invited to try out for the tandem piloting

Craig MacLean is one of 13 non-disabled athlete partners in ParalympicsGB. He won an Olympic team sprint silver medal alongside Chris Hoy in Sydney and is a former world champion. He tried out to become a tandem pilot after Beijing and will ride with the double defending Paralympic champion Anthony Kappes in the tandem kilo and tandem sprint for visually impaired riders on Saturday and Sunday

After Beijing I knew that at my age I was likely to miss out on selection for London 2012. At 37, you aren't going to be funded for another four years to not make it to London. Then I was invited to try out for the tandem piloting. The training is just as intense as on the Olympic squad, possibly not in terms of frequency, because you do not race as often. So the programme has allowed me to still compete at the top level while also getting back on with my life off the track.

I managed to get down to some of the Olympic events, and watched Jason Kenny win gold in the sprint. If the atmosphere that was in the velodrome then is even replicated by half at the Paralympics then it will be a fantastic experience.

At the stage I'm at in my career, I don't get to perform in front of the huge crowds very often any more, so this is an opportunity that it would be crazy not to take.

We have done a lot of chopping and changing in terms of who rides with who and the final pairings are based on a lot of data collection and analysis. One massive difference between Anthony and the other visually impaired stoker, Neil Fachie, is weight, with Anthony around 30kg heavier at 88kg. That's a similar weight to mine, and the 30kg difference has an influence on the handling of the bike and the characteristics of your performance.

This is a very competitive Paralympic squad; there has been no opportunity for complacency in the buildup by anyone. There are a lot of riders who haven't made it on to the team. If we were allowed a greater number of riders we would have expected to win a raft of gold and silver medals. There's a great depth to the sport.

We now train with the able-bodied squad all the time. In Manchester at the velodrome most of the training sessions are from 2-5pm. All the technology is shared between the Olympic and Paralympic squads. Some of the riders will be using the bits off Vicky Pendleton's bike during the Paralympics – the equipment came straight from Stratford to us. It's the same with the skin suits. We all reap the benefits of the research and development.

We're one of the few countries who have a lot of full-time Paralympic athletes; I'm a full-time tandem pilot, for example. It's understandable that we're outperforming a lot of other nations in that area.

Do we have an advantage because I've been a world champion and Olympian? It depends how you work with a particular stoker. It's not a question of going from being an Olympic cyclist straight on to a Paralympic tandem and everything clicking. I'm still learning and it's taken me until quite recently to get to grips with it. There are a lot of different factors. We both pedal, I'm just on the front as I'm the one who can see. I'm contributing a fair bit to the output of the bike as is Anthony on the back. It's very much a team thing. It's about getting to know each other's strengths and weaknesses. The way the bike rides is massively different, handling, technique, gear ratios and things. It's worlds apart from what I'd been used to.

It's interesting because if you look at Barney [Storey; Neil Fachie's pilot] and I as able-bodied riders then there would be no comparison. But it's a different question when you put us on a tandem with our respective stokers – if you were to swap us over, the times would look dramatically different.

The tandem has a way of levelling the field and as a pilot you have to accommodate the way your stoker rides. For me it was difficult to adapt because I would go off pedalling at too high a rate. If you have one person who can pedal at a high rate and another at a low rate then you have to account for that. Anthony had been used to pedalling at a lower rate so we meet in the middle. From the outside looking in, I can see how people might think that you can just stick an Olympic medallist on a tandem and the pairing are bound to win, but that's just not the case.