Great Britain men's team pursuit squad will not panic in their bid to defend Olympic gold after finishing second to Australia at the London Track World Cup, according to men’s endurance coach Dan Hunt.
The quartet of Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas, Peter Kennaugh and Steven Burke recorded a time of 3:58.446 in the qualifying rounds in the Olympic Velodrome, second to Austrialia’s Jack Bobridge, Rohan Dennis, Alexander Edmondson and Michael Hepburn.
In the gold and silver medal ride off, Great Britain took over two seconds off their earlier time, recording a 3:56.330, but were forced to settle for silver as Australia upped the stakes ahead of the world championships in Melbourne with a time of 3:54.615.
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"The key thing at times like these is not to panic, the easiest thing to do now to do is think ‘right we are behind we’ve got to squeeze, we’ve got to push’. " Dan Hunt |
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“From a process point of view I’m pretty happy,” said Hunt. “We wanted to ride a high 3:57 in qualifiers, we rode a 3:58. We set out to ride in and around 3:56 in the final and we’ve done that so we feel we’re on track and in a good place.
“From a result point of view it’s never nice, you’re going to feel like you’ve been punched in the gut but it’s about looking at ourselves. We are where we hope to be and we know that we’re moving forward and that we’ve got a little more to come - mixed emotions really.
“The key thing at times like these is not to panic, the easiest thing to do now to do is think ‘right we are behind we’ve got to squeeze, we’ve got to push’. We’ve got to look at the plan and if the plan needs changing based on cold logic and figures we’ll change it. I don’t think that’s the case, we need to go back into training - we only stepped out of training for five days for the track world cup.”
With only a limited window of opportunity before the world championships, Hunt said riders would engage in a training camp in Mallorca with Geraint Thomas and Pete Kennaugh’s programmes to include road racing. Hunt also indicated that the line-up was still open to change.
“We’ve got guys racing Paris-Nice, we’ve got guys racing West Flanders and we’ve got a training camp in place. Then we’ll have a week and a half in Manchester then we fly to the worlds. Our line-up is by no means chosen, there are opportunities for everyone.”
