Sun, Mar 29, 2009 page18

• Danes win gold as Britons rue what might have been

  • AFP
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Britain will look to Mark Cavendish and Victoria Pendleton to rescue their world track cycling championships campaign after another bad day of results on Thursday.

  Despite coming to the five-day competition looking to lay the foundations for the London Olympics in 2012, Britain — the track kings of Beijing with seven golds from 10 finals — were left rueing what might have been.

  Britain’s head coach Heiko Salzwedel was hoping the Olympic team pursuit champions would make the final. Instead, a quartet with only one Olympic survivor in Ed Clancy, was beat in the bronze medal match by New Zealand. Matt Parker, the men’s endurance coach, put a brave face on the performance.

  “It was probably exactly as we expected, to be honest, and we got two good rides there out of a very young team,” Parker said. “If you look at the team pursuit times of the last two years for us, it’s the equivalent of where the Olympic team was two years ago.”

  The world title went to Olympic silver medalists Denmark, who took advantage of Britain’s comparative weakness and the relative inexperience of a young Australian team to claim a first world gold in the 16-lap event. Olympic silver medalist Alex Rasmussen said he would have preferred to beat their Olympic conquerors Britain in the final.

  “We wanted to defeat the British in the final just to beat them ...that didn’t happen this year,” Rasmussen said.

  Jack Bobridge, the only Olympian in Australia’s team, was sorely disappointed at just missing the gold.

  “When it comes down to the racing you have to rely on the coach, but I felt we held them and held them pretty even, but unfortunately they had the legs in the last kilo,” Bobridge said.

  Britain made no changes to the team that had failed to qualify for the final and that arguably cost them a medal as Clancy, Steven Burke, Jonathan Bellis and Peter Kennaugh finished in 4 minutes, 1.838 seconds. The Kiwis, composed of Westley Gough, Peter Latham, Marc Ryan and Jesse Sergent, finished in 4 minutes, 0.248 seconds to claim the bronze.

  In the only speed event final, Germany proved kings for the second day in a row. Twenty-four hours after Maximilian Levy battled to succeed Britain’s Chris Hoy as keirin champion, teammate Stefan Nimke destroyed the field in a time of 1 minute, 0.666 seconds for the 1km event. Two, almost equally impressive, performances followed courtesy of Taylor Phinney of the US and Mohd Rizal Tisin of Malaysia, who took silver and bronze respectively.

  The feat of Phinney was all the more impressive as the 18-year-old son of former cycling champions Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter has only raced in a few 1km races in official competition.

  His first lap left him in 25th place, but from there he went to 22nd, then 10th, then second.

  “I don’t know if it’s the right way to do it, but it’s the pursuiters’ way of riding the kilo I guess,” he said modestly.

  Tisin’s bronze was his country’s first ever at the world championships.

  Lissie Armitstead got up from a crash to claim a silver medal behind Yumari Gonzalez in the women’s scratch final, giving Britain some consolation.

  But the Brits will be looking for another color when Cavendish races the Madison with fellow Isle of Man rider Peter Kennaugh and Pendleton aims to claim a fourth gold in the women’s sprint.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Taiwan ranked as the cheapest travel destination

  • 2

    Taiwan would benefit from integrated theater: expert

  • 3

    Scott McTominay fires Napoli to top of Serie A

  • 4

    Suppliers to follow TSMC’s US plans but may be years away, Minister says

  • 5

    Fraud fugitive returns to Taiwan after six years on the run