Question: who breaks a world record every time it gets on to the track?
Answer: Great Britain’s Women’s Team Pursuit trio of Joanna Rowsell, Dani King and Laura Trott.
What more is there to be said? No other team was in the race really, each time they took to the track that pesky world record just kept getting wiped away as if it were just some insignificant piece of irrelevant data. Once again in the final that famous roof was in danger of being lifted from its high-tech fixings.
And the crowd just loved those remarkable young women, each so delighted to be there and as thrilled by their achievement as the rest of us. What a joy to see their excitement.
Earlier we had also seen superb performances from Jason Kenny and Ed Clancy.
Ed looked terrific in the first event in the Omnium, the Flying 250m, posting the fastest time, then onto the Points Race where he again rode well, but missed out on the lap gained by seven others, which put him on the back foot a little, before moving on to the Elimination Race, or Devil Take the Hindmost as we old hands still call it. Fifth place there was a great ride as he was clearly tiring by that stage – not surprising given that only the day before he had been through the gruelling final stages of the Team Pursuit. Going into the second day he’s well placed to put in a serious challenge for another gold.
Meanwhile Jason Kenny absolutely sailed through the early stages of the Sprint competition. If anyone doubted that he was the right man to select over defending Olympic Champion Sir Chris Hoy, Jason had the answer. Fastest by a huge two tenths of a second in the qualifying round will certainly give the great Frenchman Gregory Bauge a heck of a lot to think about. We’re in for some great sprinting over the next two days, that’s for sure.
And finally, how great it was to see Trinidad’s one man cycling team, Nijsane Phillip, beat Germany’s massive thighed Robert Forstemann in the heats. I think we all love it when the underdogs triumph, and Phillip certainly provided the surprise of the session, proving to be both tactically superior and faster than the German, much to the delight of the Caribbean contingent. Fantastic.
