Wiggins, Thomas, Clancy and Burke hit 3:57 in opening round
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Geraint Thomas (GB) in good form in the pursuit(Image credit: Gerry McManus)
Great Britain qualified with a time of 3:57.471 in the men’s team pursuit at the final round of the Track World Cup in Manchester, setting one of the fastest ever qualifying times in the process.
Led off by Ed Clancy and backed up by Bradley Wiggins, Steven Burke and Geraint Thomas, Great Britain set about demolishing Denmark’s provisional leading time, although they slightly lost ground during the middle section of the race.
“Qualifying at anything around the 3:57 at this time of day when conditions aren’t great is really good. I’m really pleased. It took us a couple of laps to settle into the schedule but then we just controlled it and sat on schedule and the lads controlled it perfectly,” said Great Britain coach, Dan Hunt.
“Qualification and final rides are totally different and you’ve got to take a different mentality. Qualification is about doing a job and we wanted to ride fast and hard but we weren’t going to overly spend ourselves in doing that. That was pretty comfortable for them but it was comfortable because they rode it well and there’s more in the tank should they need it.
“Only one team has ever gone faster in qualification before and that’s us.”
Great Britain will ride off against New Zealand for gold in the final later this afternoon, while Denmark will face World Cup leaders Spain. Andrew Tennant could potentially be brought in to replace one of the British riders but no decision has yet been taken.
“I need to have a look at the riders now and do a breakdown. We’ve got Andy Tennant who sat that round out and we have the option to bring him in if we want to."
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Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
