Great Britain to miss 2012 track worlds?

While satisfied with Team Great Britain's performance in Apeldoorn, high performance director Dave Brailsford says that it's a possibility that a contingent won't make the trip to Melbourne, Australia for next year's world championships.

"Whether we need to go all the way across the world just a few months before London is questionable," said Brailsford on BBC Sport regarding the proximity of the world championships to the Olympic Games.

Team Great Britain finished fourth on the world championship medal tally, with one gold, three silver and five bronze medals won. Australia topped the tally with eight gold, two silvers and one bronze medal. Six of Australia's gold medals came from Olympic events.

"From our point of view that [performance] is satisfactory," Brailsford explained.

"We've raised the bar so high that when we don't win gold, people imagine there is a problem. The team is quietly confident.

"It might not be the gold medals everyone is used to us winning but we are on the podium and we are only small margins away from moving forward.

"We will put our foot down over the next 15 months and hopefully we'll be okay by the time we get to London."

Brailsford suggested that there was too much emphasis being played on the fact that Australia had been the team to beat Great Britain in some of the key events, namely the women's sprint and team sprint, women's kierin and men's keirin.

"If you took the emotion out of the situation, it's irrelevant," he said. "If it was different nations would we be saying the same?

The last two world championships have been an indication that Australia is on the way back in major competition, having walked away from the Beijing Olympic Games with just one silver medal from the entire cycling program, won by Anna Meares in the sprint.

At the 2010 world championships, Australia topped the medal table with a tally of six gold, two silver and two bronze medals from the 19 events contested in Copenhagen.

One Australian that won't agree is Kaarle McCulloch.

"Post-world championships last year the endurance coach Ian McKenzie sat us down and he said to us, ‘we might have won the battle here but the war is not over', and London is what we're aiming for and we're all out to get gold in London," said dual team sprint world champion prior to her third title with Meares was won in Apeldoorn.

With Great Britain's headline acts, Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton both missing out on gold this time around, Brailsford even went so far as to say that with a ‘home' Olympics looming, the lure of rainbow bands wasn't as great as it once had been.

"If you ask most mature athletes, who have won a number of world and Olympic titles there gets a point where you need a big event to get you going.

"No disrespect to the World Championships here in Apeldoorn but for her [Vicky] and Chris they need an event of the stature of the Olympic Games to get them pushing forward 100%."