On the first two days of the track World Cup at the Lee Valley Velopark, the stars of the Great Britain team have proved to be the endurance squad. The sprinters were yet to win a medal by the close of play on Saturday night after Jason Kenny faded to sixth in the keirin, while Owain Doull and Mark Christian took a third British gold medal and Laura Trott was set fair in the omnium.
Out of the blue, the Welshman Doull and the Manxman Christian proved the stars of the evening. After winning gold medals on Friday night in the team pursuit, they were late entrants to the Madison, the immensely spectacular two-man relay event decided on points tally and lap gains, and had only competed together once before as a team.
It was not a full World Cup event, as it is – controversially – no longer part of the Olympic schedule, but after a spectacular victory Doull said he hoped they would get a tilt at the world title in Paris in late February.
The pair gained points early on in the 120-lap race, then made their move just after half-distance to gain a lap with 45 laps remaining, putting them in a commanding position as the early leaders, France B, slipped out of contention. The main threat came in the final laps as Australia and New Zealand made an attack and looked set to lap the field in their turn.
The British duo defended manfully, with the London roar pushing them on, and held the southern hemisphere teams off. “The crowd lifts you so much,” said Doull. “Usually when the lactic [acid] kicks in and you’re really suffering, the noise carries you. It’s unbelievable.”
In the keirin final, the 2013 world champion Kenny finished sixth after being boxed in on the final lap by the eventual winner Stefan Bötticher of Germany. Having suffered flu in recent weeks, Kenny missed out in the opening heat and had to force his way back into the reckoning through the repechage. He won from the front from the Belarusian Uladzislau Novik, but the extra ride usually tells in the end.
The second round – with three to go through to the final – was even more dramatic, with Kenny boxed in on the final lap. Somehow he managed to shift the Pole Krzysztof Maksel to one side on the final banking – without apparently making contact – and he scraped across the line in third. That completed another disappointing day for the sprinters, with both the women’s match sprinters Victoria Williamson and Jess Varnish making early exits.
Kenny – the Olympic champion here in 2012 – opted to miss out Sunday’s match sprint going into the second day of the omnium, but his other half, Trott, was poised for a medal with a strong option on gold after winning the opening two rounds on Saturday afternoon as an intense contest developed with the Dutchwoman Kirsten Wild. That is set to continue on Sunday in the 500m time trial, flying lap and points race.
The London 2012 gold medallist marked Wild closely in the opening round, the scratch race, to overhaul her in the finish straight and land maximum points, then repeated her victory in the 3,000m pursuit, with Wild again second. For once, however, Trott’s personal party piece, the elimination race, did not go quite to plan.
She and Wild marked each other like hawks, with Trott extricating herself from one particularly tight spot by moving the French rider Laurie Berthon out of the way with her shoulders. The race came down to a sprint between Wild and Trott, with the Dutchwoman edging out the Briton by just half a wheel.
The latest variant of the omnium has reshuffled the six events so that it closes with the points race, which is longer and carries far more weight.
Where the event becomes more confusing is in the points allocation. The winner of each event now earns 40 omnium points and so on, downwards. That should, in theory, weight the race towards pure endurance riders but Trott does not feel the new format makes for more exciting racing although, ironically enough, she likes it because it may well end up neutralising the discipline which was traditionally her weakest suit and where she dropped the most points.
There was a glitch for the endurance riders in the men’s omnium, where Jonathan Dibben was unfortunate to pull his foot out of the pedal early on in the elimination race, losing him valuable points after he had followed third place in the scratch with fifth in the pursuit to lie third after two events. In the non-World Cup points race, Elinor Barker backed up her gold in Friday’s team pursuit with a bronze medal.
