No medal for pursuit team but sprinters land silver

Jason Kenny, Jack Carlin and Ryan Owens delivered a silver medal and a British record in the men’s team sprint, but the opening day of the UCI Track Cycling World Championships offered worrying signs for their pursuit team counterparts five months out from the Olympics.

Kenny, Carlin and Owens had no answer in the final asthedutchtrioofroyvan Den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland broke the world record they had set in the first round with a time of 41.225 seconds, but they will still consider the day a significant step forward.

It was a different story for Ed Clancy, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter and Ollie Wood in the men’s team pursuit, however, as Britain failed to medal at a Worlds for only the fourth time in 21 years.

In a blistering qualifying session, the Danish quartet of Lasse Hansen, Julius Johansen, Fredrik Madsen and Rasmus Pedersen smashed the world record with a time of 3mins 46.579secs,takingasecond and a half off the mark of 3:48.012 posted by Australia in Pruszkow last year. But the Danes lowered the mark again with a 3:46.203 in the first round to set up a gold medal race against New Zealand today.

Italy, whose time of 3:46.513 was remarkable in its own right, got the scant reward of a bronze medal ride against France.

Britain’s qualifying time of 3:50.341 was half a second up on their silver-medal winning performance last year, but they have still never gone faster than the 3:50 mark and have seen six other nations do so this winter.

“Fair play to the Danes, they have moved the goalposts there,” said Clancy. “It’snotsupposedtobeeasy to win Olympic medals and that was made apparent today. To do it once, twice even three times, to get to four Olympic team pursuit medals was going to be difficult. That said, we’ve seen it time and time again in previous Olympic cycles where the British team has jumped forward three or four seconds between the worlds and the Olympics.”