By Rob Cole
Elinor Barker’s relentless pursuit of medals will continue at the Manchester Velodrome this weekend in the second round of the UCI Track Cycling World Cup.
It was silver in the Madison with Emily Nelson last weekend in Poland in the first of the five event series and she will be hoping to go one better on what is effectively her home track on 10-12 November in front of a packed house.
Barker and Nelson finished in the runner-up spot behind Belgian’s reigning world champions, Jolien D’Hoore and Lotte Kopecky. Both pairs fought hard for the victory, with the GB duo finishing on 23 points to Belgium’s 29 with the Italians third.
The British pair started cautiously as they eyed up the rest of the field and the Belgians were ahead on 11 points after three sprints. That was the trigger for the British riders to attack – and they won the fourth sprint and attempted to take a lap, before being reeled in by the rest of the field.
They won a further eight points in the next two sprints, but the class of the world champions shone through as they picked up points in every sprint throughout the race. That meant the only shot at gold for Barker and Nelson was to win the final double points sprint.
The managed that, but D’Hoore and Kopecky were on Barker and Nelson’s tail to take second place in the sprint and secure enough points to win the gold medal.
Nelson had earlier won a bronze medal as part of a British Team Pursuit line-up that included Welsh rider Manon Lloyd. They beat Germany in the ride-off, while Italy took the gold medal ahead of Canada.
The Madison event returns to the Olympic schedule for Tokyo 2020, for both men and women, after being absent from the 2012 and 2016 Games. But it won’t be part of the schedule for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April.
Instead, the 23-year-odl Barker, who won a silver in the Scratch Race and bronze in the Points Race in Glasgow in 2014, will have to choose from some of her other specialities. Already an Olympic gold medallist and world record holder in the Team Pursuit with Team GB she will surely be at the heart of what is shaping up to be a strong Welsh quartet for that event in Australia.
Welsh Cycling will put forward their proposed team of riders for the Gold Coast on 11 December, with the Team Wales selectors due to announce their overall squad later that month. The Gold Coast Games are on 4-15 April, 2018, and the Welsh cycling team will be looking to better their haul of five medals in 2014.
It has already been a superb year for Barker who added a world track title to her 2016 Olympic crown in Rio when she won the Points Race in Hong Kong. She also struck silver with Nelson in the Madison and was runner-up in the Scratch Race.
She then won the European Championships Madison title in tandem with Ellie Dickinson and also picked up a silver medal in the Team Pursuit in Berlin. She then took part in her first UCI World Road Championships in Bergen, Norway, in September and finished a highly creditable 18th in the Time Trial and 66th in the Road Race.
Fourth at the British road race championships, in her warm-up for Norway she won two stages, and the overall title, in the Rás na mBan road race in Ireland. Now she can look forward to a strong season on the roads next year when she returns to the Wiggle High 5 team.
Team Wales also entered a team in the World Cup event in Poland to provide experience and top level competition for Lewis Oliva (Sprint and Keirin), Rachel James (Sprint, Keirin and Team Sprint), Ellie Coster (Team Sprint), Sam Harrison (Points Race and Scratch) and Ciara Horne (Individual Pursuit). Joe Holt joined Barker and Lloyd in the senior British squad.
With both Barker and Horne, a double European champion, having been a part of the Team GB squad that struck gold in Rio in the Team Pursuit, Wales could have a chance of challenging for a medal in that event on the Gold Coast.
They can expect strong opposition from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England and Scotland, but with Lloyd having joined Barker in winning silver at the European Championships with Team GB earlier this year, and Barker’s younger sister, Megan, having claimed a European Junior title in the same team as Lloyd and Nelson in 2014, there is plenty of talent to choose from.