Great Britain take silver in team pursuit at Track World Championships

A youthful Great Britain team pursuit quartet tonight came up agonisingly short in the Track World Championships final against Australia, ending up with the silver medal by 0.152sec after both teams broke the track record with rides that broke the 3min 56sec barrier, the first time two teams have gone so fast in a team pursuit final. Steven Burke, Andy Tennant, Ben Swift and Ed Clancy had earlier broken the track record with a scintillating 3min 56.869sec in qualifying, with Australia over a second slower. But the Australians were able to draft in one of the strongest riders in the championship, Cameron Meyer, for the final. That probably gave them the edge in a race where they were ahead from the start, with the British running about half a second slower for most of the 4km, closing to within an eighth of a second late on before their rivals rallied. The British will take some heart from the fact that this Australian squad is their strongest, while the Britons are without the Olympic gold medallists Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas.