Britain’s sprinters out of medal positions in cycling world championship

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/feb/18/great-britain-sprinters-cycling-world-championship

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It is too early to talk of a crisis among Britain’s team sprinters, male and female, after they slumped to eighth places in their respective qualifiers here without a sniff of a medal. But the performances of Katy Marchant in the women’s 500m time trial on Thursday and Kian Emadi in the men’s kilometre on Friday have suddenly taken on new and more urgent significance.

This is an unsparing event and the issues for the men and the women boil down to two absences, one permanent, the second – hopefully – temporary. Sir Chris Hoy’s departure in spring 2013 left a vacancy in the anchor role for the men; Emadi was initially slated to replace him before succumbing to a back injury. He has since recovered and was neck and neck in selection here with Callum Skinner, who visibly struggled to hold the pace of the Olympic champions, Philip Hindes and Jason Kenny.

There is no dishonour in that – even Hoy had trouble holding the pace at times – but it left the young Scot brutally exposed in his first world championship, even though Kenny did his best to temper his speed a little to help him, and Hindes chose a slightly higher gear to make for a slightly less ferocious start. “Basically, me and Phil set off without Callum on our wheel,” said Kenny, whose second lap at least was world class.

“It’s over so quickly that when it goes wrong it goes wrong all at once and there’s not much you can do about it,” explained the Olympic champion. “It’s not like you can react to it. Also we’ve got no way of telling if he’s on the back. We’re just going hell for leather on the front and kind of praying that he’s there.” The kilometre will give some idea of Emadi’s return to form, and the 500m will give an indication of how far Marchant has travelled since her conversion from heptathlon two years ago.

That matters because the women’s team sprinters, Jess Varnish and Victoria Williamson, are struggling without Becky James, who is getting over a long-term knee injury. The urgency of Great Britain’s need for reinforcements was underlined when the Chinese duo of Gong Jinjie and Zhong Tianshi set a world record for the two laps en route to gold in the final. The world is moving on, rapidly, from the time when Victoria Pendleton and Varnish were contenders in London.

Not long afterwards, the velodrome echoed to chants of “Allez les bleus” as France lined up for the men’s final; they were well beaten by the defending champions, New Zealand, but the referees overturned that because of an irregular change by the Kiwis, ensuring the perfect start to France’s first world track cycling championships since Bordeaux in 2006. It seems incredible that it is half a century since Paris last hosted the worlds but that reflects the absence of an indoor track in the French capital until this facility opened last year.

Kenny has a chance to bounce back on Thursday in the keirin, when Great Britain are in the hunt for two medals in the men’s and women’s team pursuits. Although Elinor Barker, Laura Trott, Jo Rowsell and Katie Archibald started as favourites in Wednesday’s qualifying round and finished fractionally behind Australia – a rare defeat in qualifying – they will have a chance to take their fifth successive world title as long as they get past third qualifiers Canada, their second-round opponents.

Trott and her companions have been the target for the rest of the world since London 2012; their male counterparts, meanwhile, desperately needed Wednesday’s strong ride to erase the memory of last year’s eighth place in Colombia, which was dire for the 2012 world and Olympic champions. Now, Ed Clancy, Steven Burke, Owain Doull and Andy Tennant can at least say they are back on track for Rio.

They face third qualifiers Germany in the ride-off for a place in the gold medal final; such is the talismanic nature of this event, that this was clearly a relief to the team’s technical director, Shane Sutton. The team had yet to confirm their lineup for Thursday but there remains a chance that they may draft in the debutant Matt Gibson for the second round.