Great Britain’s team pursuit squad will be deprived of their talisman Ed Clancy until the new year after it was confirmed the double Olympic gold medallist will have surgery next week on a slipped disc.
“He’s pretty positive, he reckons he’ll be back in the new year,” said John Herety, the Yorkshire rider’s manager at the JLT-Condor squad. “It’s an operation that you walk away from so he will be back on his bike by Christmas, although it can take three months for the disc to repair properly.”
Clancy injured the disc on the last day of September’s Tour of Britain when he bent over to grab the handle of his bag after the stage finish. He subsequently missed the European championships in early October, and is now set to miss the next round of the World Cup – 5-7 December in New Zealand – and possibly the final World Cup round in Hong Kong in early January.
He will, however, have two months to get fit before the world track championships at the London Olympic velodrome in early March. Clancy is the key rider in the team pursuit squad – Olympic gold medallists in 2008 and 2012 – because of his ability to get the team up to speed from the start and to hang on after his start effort.
“Ed has been struggling with his back and he needs the operation,” said British Cycling’s technical director, Shane Sutton.“Someone of Ed’s calibre is obviously a big loss but we believe we have the riders capable of stepping up in his absence, allowing him to focus on his surgery and rehabilitation.”
Clancy is the leading candidate to ride the omnium in Rio – he was bronze medallist at London 2012 in the discipline – but if there are doubts over his fitness, that could open the door for Mark Cavendish, who has been training with the GB squad recently and will ride the Hong Kong World Cup in search of Olympic qualifying points.
