British young cyclists blaze to world cup golds as they head for London 2012
Last updated 11/3/2008 5:56:55 PM
British young cyclists blaze to world cup golds as they head for London 2012
After their almost total domination of the cycling events in the Beijing Olympics, British cyclists gave notice in Manchester that they are already targeting London 2012.
The first World Cup event since the Olympic Games were totally and utterly dominated by British cyclists and even the Japanese were upstaged in their own event the men's keirin, put on separately by the Japanese Keirin Association, where 22 year old Matthew Crampton took the £11,800 first prize against a multitude of professional Japanese keirin riders.
The big cheque represents half of Crampton's annual fundings as a junior member of Britain's squad who know every inch of this home track where they spend their year training.
As well as Crampton's success, in the official World Cup events the GB team scooped 14 of the 17 events, an astonishing return for a very young team missing Chris Hoy and any number of gold medallists from China.
This was the future and leading the way was "veteran" Victoria Pendleton who , at 28 years of age and still heading for her prime, won three titles, showing how unfair it was that she was curtailed to just the one event in Beijing because of the disparity in women's events compared to the men.
She said: "I think I showed that women deserve more events for the London 2012 Games, particularly with all our youngsters coming through. "They have been terrific, a real credit."
So have Performance Director Dave Brailsford and his expert team who continue to feed in youngsters to keep the pressure on the seniors – whoever they are.