Womens Team Pursuit

Bronzie

Hadn't realised that Houvenaghel, Romero & Rowsell had never raced together before at this discipline. Some achievement then to win gold on your first outing together - it's a difficult discipline to get right.

How promising is Rowsell - 19 years old and winning big races on the track and road in equal measure. 8)

EDIT: Got her age wrong - she's now 19 not 17

BeaconRuth

They were superb - made it look easy.

Some of the other teams got a bit ragged at times and there were clearly some very imbalanced combinations of riders. In one team, the Dutch I think, one girl did about 5 laps on the front and was still dropping her team mates. Just goes to show how hard it is for countries to turn out 3 female pursuiters of equal calibre in the first year of it being a World Cup/World Champs event. I do hope that some of the other nations come to the party in the future and help push up the standard - there were no Australians, French, Italians, Spanish - but I guess that's not surprising given that it's not an olympic event and it is an olympic year. It would be surprising if getting a women's team pursuit squad together was a priority for many countries.

What a fantastic event though - the ability to step up and deliver such a supreme athletic and coordinated performance with a velodrome roaring at you and screaming support............. I'm so glad I got tickets at the last minute!

ps. Jo Rowsell is 19, not 17, Bronzie. Still young and very impressive though.

Ruth

FixUpLookSharp

I have to say, it's absolutely incredible what Britain has been able to do on the track. What an amazing return on your investment! I think national federations the world over will be studying and copying BC's plan, and hopefully building velodromes of similar quality to Manchester.

Blonde

I am not even all that hopeful that Mancs. 'drome will still be here (or at least, not used for cycling) after the London (2012 games) one is built. I reckon everything will move down South then. The Mancs track is already often shut to cyclists and used for, well, just about anything else, despite the fact that they have only just re-furbished the track itself, which is really annoying. I assume it's because other events just make a lot more money, and draw greater sponsorship and crowds in the UK - very, very sad, particularly as the Great Britain does so well in track events.

FixUpLookSharp

I think something similar is happening at the ADT in LA. It was supposed to be just for track, but recently they've started to let other sports use the infield. They have kids there playing volleyball, for example, with a big net up between the infield and the track, while people are cycling! It looks like they're just not making enough money to have it be dedicated solely to track...

Bronzie

BeaconRuth wrote:

ps. Jo Rowsell is 19, not 17, Bronzie.

BC's website confused me - according to them, she's 9!