Colne Olympic hero cyclist Steven Burke has Gold Medal stamp

The stamp celebrates Steven Burke, Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas and Peter Kennaugh’s gold medal win in the Men’s Cycling Team Pursuit final.

The stamps are on sale in 500 Post Office branches across the UK, including Steven’s hometown of Colne in Lancashire, Ed’s home town of Huddersfield and Geraint’s home town of Cardiff.

Royal Mail has also painted one of its historic red post boxes gold in Colne (on the corner of Crabtree Street and Albert Street), Huddersfield, and Cardiff. Isle of Man Post Office, which is independent of the Royal Mail network, will make its own arrangements to paint a post box gold for its gold medal-winning resident, Peter Kennaugh.

Customers can also buy the stamps at www.royalmail.com/goldmedalstamps and from Royal Mail’s customer service centre on 08457 641 641 at Tallents House, 21 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 PPB.

As soon as Ed, Geraint, Peter and Steven won their gold medal, Getty Images, official Photo Agency of the IOC, submitted a selection of the best images from that moment to the eight-strong Royal Mail design team who had just one hour to review all the images, locate the most fitting and atmospheric, crop and refine the photo, add their names, then position within the templated design of the six-stamp miniature sheet.

An additional 4,700 post offices will receive the Gold Medal stamps within a week.

For the full list of the Post Office branches selling 2012 Team GB Gold Medal stamps visit www.postoffice.co.uk