In the non-Olympic event, the Individual Pursuit, despite no training for the event, Wendy Houvenaghel comes away with a Silver medal.
Day 4 – Bronze for Laura Trott in Women’s Omnium
Great Britain’s Laura Trott has finished third in the Women’s Omnium in the second round of the World Cup in Columbia. This brings the tally of medals for GB to three, Gold, (Team Pursuit), Silver (Wendy Houvenaghel, Individual Pursuit) and Bronze, (Laura Trott, Women’s Omnium).
Trott, the European Champion for this Olympic event, finished the final event (500m TT) in the six event series in first place with a time of 35.378 and after coming into the second day in fifth, Laura missed the Silver medal by a point. SHe was however pleased with the result saying on Twitter, “Yay :) super happy with the result of that hard omnium! And another pb in the 500m :)”
Day 3 – Silver for Wendy Houvenaghel
In the non-Olympic event, the Individual Pursuit, despite no training for the event, Wendy Houvenaghel comes away with a Silver medal. Up against the same girl who beat her for the World title in Poland in 2009, Alison Shanks, Wendy did her best against a rider in form but Shanks was far too quick. The winner’s time of 3.28.994 is in the same territory that Wendy and Rebecca Romero were in for the Beijing Olympics when they finished second and first respectively.
Shanks was ahead from the word go and made it a Gold and Silver for each of the two riders after Wendy had won Gold with GB in the Team Pursuit the day before.
In the Women’s Omnium, European Champion Laura Trott is in fifth place after the first three events. Talking about the Omnium for Laura Trott, Paul Manning explained to British Cycling “We won’t change our approach to the omnium for Laura; it will be a case of taking one event at a time presuming she qualifies. There is a strong field here in Cali, both Sarah Hammer and Tara Whitten will ride and this will be a good test to assess performance and an indication of her progression.”
Called to ride in Cali unexpectedly, Laura explained earlier this month to British Cycling “After winning the European Championships I was not planning to race again before the London World Cup in February 2012, however that has now changed. As such, I’ve not been training specifically for Cali and don’t know what kind of form I have. I won’t be backing off for this race either, the idea is to train through, as the original plan and continue training after the races.â€
The views of rider and coach certainly don’t seem to match up as any progression can only matched when a rider is in form and Laura’s fifth place in the flying lap (14.583), one of her strong events, is perhaps an indication of that form, or lack of. That said, her 4th place in the Points was an awesome result for the young World champion who was only one of five riders to take a lap.
The 11th in the Elimination though put a dent in the medal hopes but with three strong events for her to come, the Hertfordshire young lady is in touch with her rivals for a Bronze medal. Alas, the two girls leading, Whitten of Canada and Hammer of the USA are such strong Pursuiters that the Gold, at least in this competition, is probably out of her reach.
In other World Cup news, Maximilian Levy of Germany continued their domination of the Sprint events with a win in the Keirin from Francois Pervis. Hersony Canelon of Venezuela was third.
Day 2 – Gold for Sarah Storey, Laura Trott and Wendy Houvenaghel
The Great Britain trio of Sarah Storey, Laura Trott and Wendy Houvenaghel came back from being second fastest in qualifying to show why they are World Champions, beating New Zealand by a whopping four seconds.
In fast conditions in the velodrome, the time (3.21) for the British girls was one of their best ever while the Kiwis, who were slower than their qualifying time of 3.24 where they were fastest, could only manage a 3:25.618 in the final. The British team, with two current World Champions in the line up (Trott and Houvenaghel), started quickly and were straight away well up on the New Zealand outfit lead by former World Champion Alison Shanks.
Looking at the analysis of the ride, GB were never headed by the women in black as they reeled off a few 15 second laps to begin with and then settled down into a series of 16 second laps all the way to end. Their final lap of 16.4 was one of their fastest showing just how strong they were.
There was certainly a lot of elation in the team with Laura Trott on Twitter saying “Woohooo :) we smashed it .. GB hit back!”. Coach Paul Manning told British Cycling “The Velodrome in Cali is open-sided which means there are changable conditions – if I’m honest, those conditions improved from the qualification and that helped us to the win – a faster track was in our favour.
In other news, Germany broke the World Best for the Team Sprint held by Great Britain with a time of 42.914 in a show of strength where both the German teams fought for the Gold medal in the final. In the final for Gold in the Men’s Team Pursuit, the Australian team fell shortly after the start, which made it easy for the New Zealand team to win the Gold. The final for the Bronze though was a real nailbiter with Denmark ignoring the home support for the Columbian team and managing to cross the line a few hundredths quicker than the Columbian team.
GOLD/SILVER
1. GreatBritain 3:21
TROTT/HOUVENAGHEL/STOREY
2 New Zealand 3:25
ELLIS/NIELSEN/SHANKS
3 USA 3:44.274 48.155
HAMMER/REED/TAMAYO
4 Lithuania 3:55.010 45.955
TREBAITE/PIKAUSKAITE/SOSENKO
Day 1 – Qualifying
The first day of the World Cup in Cali saw the Team Pursuit qualifying and Great Britain has sent three women to compete principally in the Women’s Team Pursuit. World Champions Laura Trott, Wendy Houvenaghel and Sarah Storey and they qualified second fastest with a 3.24.849, eight tenths behind the New Zealand team.
Sending a team there was a last minute decision by the team to help boost their Olympic qualifying points and with none of the riders peaking for the event, mini peak or otherwise, it was a good performance. Whilst the times are quite slow overall, being assured of at least second in the final will no doubt be pleasing for the team who are after qualifying points more than anything.
As Olympic Silver medallist Wendy Houvenaghel said in an exclusive interview with VeloUK before flying out, they will be going for the win no matter what stage of the training block they are in. Her coach, Paul Manning, told British Cycling, “Conditions were windy and challenging tonight, it was different from in training. In the end we went for Laura, Wendy and Sarah as the lineup order; it was the best option. Obviously, this group has only been training together for a couple of weeks and today was the first time they raced – the more they ride together the better they will get.”
“In the short term though, I’m confident we can give the Kiwi’s a good race tomorrow. There’s not a huge time difference and we can address a few things after this first race. We can look at things like gearing and turn length and how that will change the energy within the team.”
One of the teams expected to challenge them, Australia, were however disappointed by their performance, with Sarah Kent saying on Twitter “Well I am stumped! Disappointment is an understatement. Can’t believe after how good we felt in prerace, we get another 5th… back to the drawing board. Time to get back on our game!”
New Zealand however, with former World Champion Alison Shanks in their line up are looking in good form and will be hard to beat but if anyone can, it’s the riders in the rainbow stripes, Great Britain.
In the Men’s Team Pursuit, Australia too fielded some of their World champions in the form of Michael Hepburn and Luke Durbridge as they put almost two seconds into New Zealand. Showing just how much of a difference conditions, travelling and the track can have, the Kiwi team which did a 3.55 a few weeks ago back in New Zealand were almost 10 seconds slower in qualifying with a 4.04.6 to the Aussies time of 4.02.7.
Women’s Team Pursuit Qualifying
1 New Zealand 3:24.005
ELLIS, NIELSEN, SHANKS
2 Great Britain 3:24.849
TROTT, HOUVENAGHEL, STOREY
3 United States 3:26.027
HAMMER, BAUSCH, TAMAYO
4 Lithuania 3:26.468
TREBAITE, PIKAUSKAITE, SEREIKAITE
5 Australia 3:26.494
6 Ukraine 3:26.779
7 Canada 3:27.609
8 Belarus 3:28.046
9 Belgium 3:29.096
10 Netherlands 3:30.549
11 Korea 3:30.975
12 Poland 3:31.531
13 China 3:32.207
14 Germany 3:32.668
15 Russia 3:33.053
16 Japan 3:34.790
17 Hong Kong 3:39.227
MENS TEAM PURSUIT
1 Australia 4:02.739
DURBRIDGE, DENNIS, HEPBURN, MULHERN
2 New Zealand 4:04.612
BEWLEY, GATE, RYAN Marc, SERGENT Jesse
3 Colombia 4:06.118
4 Denmark 4:06.794
5 Spain 4:07.589
6 Germany 4:08.982
7 LOKOSPHINX 4:10.400
8 Belgium 4:11.081
9 Switzerland 4:11.824
10 Hong Kong 4:11.847
11 France 4:11.950
12 Ukraine 4:13.511
13 Netherlands 4:14.271
14 Chile 4:15.370
15 Russia 4:15.691
16 United States 4:21.349
17 Brazil 4:23.864
