Great Britain Cycling Team head coach Iain Dyer has hailed the performances of the squad’s developing riders after they topped the medal table at each of the first Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup rounds of the 2016/17 series.

Great Britain won five golds in front of their home crowd at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow earlier this month, before following this up with two golds, two silvers and a bronze medal in Apeldoorn last weekend.

With many of the British stars who topped the Olympic medal table in Rio absent, the consecutive world cup weekends saw developing riders underline their potential on the global stage.

Dyer said: “As with every Olympic cycle, the post-Games period has seen some of our more experienced riders take a well-earned break, and allowed us to give opportunities to many of the developing riders within the ranks.

“The performances over the last two weekends have been extremely encouraging, and have underlined the depth of talent which our Academy structure is producing – constantly strengthening the selection opportunities for major events.

“Particularly heartening was the way in which our riders dealt with the additional attention of performing in front of a home crowd in Glasgow – their performances were fantastic and will inspire great confidence going forward.”

Among those to top the podium in Glasgow was team sprint trio Ryan Owens, Jack Carlin and Joe Truman, who followed that victory up with another gold medal on the opening day of competition in Apeldoorn.

Both team pursuit quartets were also victorious in Scotland, while Emily Kay added to that success by also winning the omnium, a result which she backed up with an impressive silver medal in the same event in the Netherlands.

At the age of just 22, Olympic champions Elinor Barker and Katie Archibald provided some experience to the youthful squads, and both produced stunning performances to win golds: Archibald alongside Manon Lloyd in the dramatic inaugural world-level women’s Madison in Glasgow, and Barker with a dominant display in the points race in Apeldoorn.

Of the duo, Dyer added: “Both Katie and Elinor turned in tremendous performances over the last two weekends, and despite still being very young themselves, adapted very well to the role of the more experienced, senior team-mate in a young squad.

“Our developing riders are fortunate enough to have role models such as Katie and Elinor to look up to and learn from, and they have both proved again their talent on the bike and their value off it.”