2007 European Track Championships

 

July 11-15, 2007; Cottbus, Germany

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Under 23 Men’s Team Pursuit

 

Peter Kennaugh, still a junior, leads the GB Under 23 Team Pursuit foursome during a decisive ride where they qualified fastest by a long way.

 

The run up to this event has not been good for Great Britain. They came with five riders and two of them became sick, Andy Tennant and Russell Hampton. This left them with two options --- to pull out or to use one of the Junior team Pursuiters. Rod Ellingworth chose the latter and drafted Peter Kennaugh into the team.

 

It was a journey into the unknown for the Olympic Academy coach (men’s endurance) as Kennaugh had not ridden with the team at this level since the year before when both Bellis and Burke rode with Kennaugh at the Junior worlds. On a track that was also very slow, the schedule before the competition began was looking like a ‘17’ and as the rival teams went faster and faster, the Russians doing a 4.18,   the pressure was on this very young team with only Swift being a second year senior.

 

Whilst technically, the ride was not perfect, the time was outstanding and their 4.12 blew the opposition away and they made the Gold medal final with almost a six second buffer over their rivals. What was amazing was that Kennaugh went 12 seconds quicker than he did to win Gold in the Junior event and said it actually felt easier! All agreed however that it was quite a bumpy and windy ride with gusts of wind catching them and making life difficult at times.

 

Peter Kennaugh has the honour of probably being the first rider to win both the Junior and Under 23 Team Pursuit titles in the one championship when he joined his older GB teammates to destroy the rest of the teams and be crowned European Champions. Left-Right, Peter Kennaugh, Ben Swift, Jonny Bellis, and Steven Burke who won his second medal of the championships.

 

Team Pursuit Final
As expected, the Great Britain foursome came out in one of the last events of the night to give the rest of Europe a lesson in team pursuiting. The GB team rode quicker than they did in the morning to almost catch the Russians at the end of the four kilometres. It was a better display by the young team who had all been given one element of their ride to improve on from the morning by their coach Rod Ellingworth.

 

Result: GB -- 4.12.196 beat Russia -- 4.20.590

 

 

Reactions

Peter Kennaugh; “When I first got told I was more nervous than I have ever been but once I had a meeting with Rod, I had more confidence going into the first ride. On the start line, I was shaking in my boots but after about two laps, I was sitting in the wheels and felt quite comfortable”.

 

“In the final, I knew what I had to do and did it quite well. With only three needed to finish, it was pointless me being in there so I gave it everything with a lap to go and bailed out.”  on how he hopes to fit in with the Academy next year if selected, he says “if selected, I’ll still be nervous because Junior to Under 23 is a big step with race distances but this does help and give me an insight into what its all about.”

 

Ben Swift: “This is pretty unreal really – my first Team Pursuit title since I came into the team pursuit this year. I never thought I would be doing Team Pursuiting and this caps off a really good season so far. Being so far ahead of the others is quite surreal. We saw the qualifying times and were a bit struck by how far ahead we were. This was only my fourth Team Pursuit race. My role is man three. I moved up a position after the Manchester World Cup.”

 

Jonny Bellis: “That was fantastic. It was good to have the old Manx partnership back together. We were first came to this track, we were all saying what is this track about and it shocked us all in a way. We sat down and had a chat with Rod about the quickest way to go round it and improved with each training session.”

 

“On the day, we knew what to expect, had a strategy which we stuck to and it seemed to work. Doing laps here is more than doing them on a 250 track but we adjusted to that in Newport by doing lap and halfs to get that long turn feel. We all stuck to our three lap turns in this and it seemed to work.”

 

RESULTS

Qual
1. Great Britain (Jonathan Bellis, Steven Burke, Ben Swift, Peter Kennaugh) 4:12,890.
2. Russia (Alexy Bauer, Ivan Kovalev, Nikolay Trusov, Alexey Usov) 4:18.946.

3. Holland (Ismael Kip, Pim Ligthart, Wim Stroetinga, Sipke Zylstra) 4:19.250.
4. Belgium (Dominique Cornu, Kenny De Ketele, Jonathon Dufrasne, Tim Mertens) 4:21.940

 

Finals
1. Great Britain (Jonathan Bellis, Steven Burke, Ben Swift, Peter Kennaugh) 4:12,196.
2. Russia (Alexy Bauer, Ivan Kovalev, Nikolay Trusov, Alexey Usov) 4:20,590.

3. Belgium (Dominique Cornu, Kenny De Ketele, Jonathon Dufrasne, Tim Mertens) 4:17,87
4. Holland (Ismael Kip, Pim Ligthart, Wim Stroetinga, Sipke Zylstra) 4:18,26.