Great Britain wins women's team sprint and team pursuit with world record rides

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Four world records fell on the first full day of medal competition in the UCI World Cup in London amid raucous scenes in the new Olympic Velodrome, packed with 6,000 spectators for both day and evening sessions.

But it was the performance of a young British team in the women’s team pursuit that threatened to raise the roof. Minutes after Australia sliced 0.405 seconds from the 3,000m world record in their bronze medal ride-off against the Netherlands, Laura Trott, Joanna Rowsell and Dani King stepped up to record the first ever sub-3:19-ride with 3:18.148.

To cap a night of outstanding displays in the relatively new discipline, the silver medallists Canada also went inside 3:19 and the old record.

The other world record fell to the GB pairing of Victoria Pendleton and Jess Varnish in the team sprint, their time of 32.754 representing a 0.074-second improvement on the mark set earlier in the day, in qualifying, by Australia's Anna Meares and Kaarle McCulloch.

There was Australian success in the women’s 10km scratch race, with Melissa Hoskins attacking in the final 2km to win alone. Germany maintained their recent superiority in the men’s team sprint, beating France in the final, with GB claiming bronze from Australia. Germany also took gold in the kilometre, thanks to Stefan Nimke, while Albert Torres of Spain won the points race.

None could quite the atmosphere generated by a partisan crowd for the women’s team pursuit final, which saw Britain re-jig its line-up, with Dani King coming in for Wendy Houvenaghel. In the event, they produced a far steadier and smoother ride than their qualifying effort the previous evening, though Trott once again appeared to be the strongest link in the chain, and managed an extended spell of a lap-and-a-half on the front towards the end.

“Jo came out a lot steadier today, which set the ride up,” said Trott. “Yesterday she came out as if we were doing a bloody 500-metre sprint and it's like ‘where do you go from there?’ You're only going to get slower.

“We came out a lot steadier today for the first four laps. It was control, control and then hit for home and that's exactly what we did.”

Her extra long spell was “to keep the speed in there,” Trott explained. “I felt, as much as I was absolutely shattered, the pace that I would have held compared to what the other two would have held -- it just kept the pace there, kept the speed there. It was just the right thing to do.”

Trott will also ride the omnium, starting on Saturday, a prospect that left her “excited”, she said.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was the victory by Pendleton and Varnish over their old rivals, Meares and McCulloch. Pendleton revealed that the British pair gambled for the final: “We thought we would experiment and try a few [different] gears, tweak them a litle bit. We’d get a silver medal in the worst case anyway. It was a gamble but this was the right time to do it.

“It was so loud we couldn’t tell what the times were but to come to this track and do a time like that fills us with confidence. It was wonderful, but we feel we’ve got more to give.”

Meares and McCulloch, the reigning world champions, also took some positives from the experience. “For us it was the best possible situation, racing the British team in the final in front of an extremely loud and vocal crowd,” said Meares. “That’s an experience you can’t pay for or simulate. You can’t get that anywhere. I think we’re going to be a great deal better for that experience.”

While McCulloch admitted to nerves before the final, she also insisted: “We’ll be better for this experience, we’re going to take a lot away from this.”

The men’s omnium got underway with the flying lap won by Zach Bell (Canada), points race won by Eloy Teruel Rovira (Spain) and elimination race won by Elia Viviani (Italy), but it is Colombian Juan Arango who leads the competition from Viviani and Bryan Coquard of France.