SCOT Katie Archibald and partner Elinor Barker collected their second gold medals of the weekend by helping Great Britain to victory in the women’s team pursuit at the Track World Cup in Manchester.
Archibald and Barker had been afforded a morning off after winning gold in the madison on Saturday night, allowing Manon Lloyd and Emily Kay to help Neah Evans and Emily Nelson to book Britain’s place in the gold-medal race with a straightforward first-round victory over Belgium.
And there was no doubt about the final either with Archibald, Barker, Evans and Nelson beating Italy by a margin of almost five seconds.
It was a third medal of the weekend for Archibald, who took silver in the omnium on Friday night as well.
“It’s cool to have ended on a high, not just in the time we’ve set but the way we’ve ridden it,” the 23-year-old said. “I didn’t expect it to go that well, because we’ve got it by a margin there and I’m pretty proud of it to be honest.”
As Olympic champions, it was no surprise to see Archibald and Barker doing extended turns on the front but Evans and Nelson were doing one-and-a-half lap efforts of their own in an impressive showing.
“It’s not surprising, but it’s nice to be pleasantly informed as to what’s in this team,” Archibald added.
“This is only the second or third major competition of rolling out of a team pursuit plan and building that to race day. I’m enthused about it. I think there’s a lot more to come.”
It was an improvement on the four minutes 18.471 seconds the quartet set in qualifying on Saturday, making it the fastest time by a British squad since Archibald and Barker joined Laura Kenny and Joanna Roswell Shand in breaking the world record at the Rio Olympics.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting that,” Barker said. “I thought we’d maybe break 18. I’ve not seen the split but that will be one of the fastest times we’ve done outside of the Olympics and I think that’s a really nice statement to be able to put out at this point in the cycle.”
Britain’s Olympic team sprint champion Callum Skinner was in the colours of trade team 100% Me this weekend, and the Scot collected bronze in the kilo.
The 25-year-old set a personal best of one minute 1.061 seconds, two weeks after suffering a back injury in the same event at the European Championships in Berlin.
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