Great Britain’s Jon Dibben, Ed Clancy, Dani King and Laura Trott will head to the GP Prueba in Valencia this weekend to begin the qualifying process to compete in the omnium event throughout the UCI Track Cycling World Cup season.
Olympic omnium champion Laura Trott and youngster Jon Dibben both start the journey with a good baseline of UCI points already acquired from the track world championships in Minsk, where Trott finished second and Dibben in eighth.
British Cycling men’s track endurance coach Paul Manning explains: “You need 90 points to qualify for the omnium at the world cups and you need to retain someone in the top 24 in the rankings.
“We’re sending the four riders out to GP Prueba to begin the process of gaining sufficient qualification points so that we can keep our options open during the world cup season.”
Paul Manning
“We’re sending the four riders out to GP Prueba to begin the process of gaining sufficient qualification points so that we can keep our options open during the world cup season.”
With a limited number of European events at which riders can earn qualification points at, Manning is expecting a strong field to descend upon Valencia at the weekend.
“If you win the omnium at these events, you score 80 points so you’re obliged to compete in at least two events, maybe more if it’s a good quality field.
“The younger riders have the added option of the under 23 European Championships to score points at, but for the elite riders, the competition options are more limited so I’m expecting there to be some big name riders at Valencia, trying to bag their points early on.”
With the quartet currently on road duty with their trade teams, Manning isn’t placing expectations too high on his riders: “They’ve had a fairly short lead-in of track work as they’re following a more road based programme at the moment, so it will be interesting to see how quickly they can transition back to the track.
“It’s been a few months since the worlds so they haven’t done the specifics required for the omnium so we will see how they go across the breadth of events.”
