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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Wiggins unlikely to defend pursuit gold

 Bradley Wiggins on his way to silver in the time trial at the Road World Championships in Copenhagen this year. Photograph: Jeppe Michael Jensen/EPA

Bradley Wiggins is unlikely to be part of the Great Britain quartet that defends the team pursuit gold medal in London next August, according to the coach at his Team Sky squad, Rod Ellingworth. "The chances of him doing the team pursuit are really slim now," Ellingworth told the Guardian. "I don't think he will be doing it. He wants to do the Tour then the road race and time trial at the Olympics."


As Team Sky's race coach, Ellingworth is heavily involved in planning the riders' schedules for 2012, and he confirmed that Wiggins will not ride the team pursuit for Britain at either the London World Cup in February – the first event on the Olympic velodrome – or the Track Cycling World Championships in Melbourne in early April.


In recent weeks the team pursuit squad have been in heavy training at the Manchester velodrome and Wiggins has not been part of that camp. "He doesn't have the track in his programme at the moment," said the team pursuit coach, Dan Hunt. "It's certainly not his priority." There does, however, remain the chance that Wiggins may be drafted into the team at a late stage, as even if he is named as part of the Olympic road team, the rules would not prevent him stepping in if one of the selected team-pursuit quartet fell ill.


"His priority is the time trial and road race," said Hunt, "but he does have the proven ability to step in with a few days' preparation as he did before the Manchester World Cup last season." Ellingworth concurred: "You can't say he will never do it, his name will be in the system. So the team pursuit is an option but not the first option."


Ellingworth said that Wiggins should be in the Sky team that targets two World Tour stage races in 2012, the Tour of Catalonia and the Tour of Romandie, with less emphasis on the Paris-Nice race where he finished third this year. Wiggins is expected to start his season in the Tour of Algarve between 15 and 19 February and will also defend his title in the Dauphiné Libéré stage race, the final build-up event to the Tour de France.


Meanwhile the Paralympian Sarah Storey continued her campaign to be part of Great Britain's Paralympic and able-bodied teams in London 2012, when she joined the world champions Laura Trott and Wendy Houvenaghel to win team pursuit gold in the World Cup round in Cali, Colombia. The trio qualified second to New Zealand in 3min 24.849sec, then upped their game in the gold-silver medal ride-off, improving to 3:21.830 to win by almost four seconds. Paul Manning, the women's endurance coach, said: "The velodrome in Cali is open-sided, which means changeable conditions – if I'm honest those conditions improved from the qualification and that helped us to the win. A faster track was in our favour."


The 34-year-old Storey, who is one of Britain's most prolific Paralympic medalists, added victory in Cali to her previous World Cup gold in Manchester this February, where the British women twice set UK best times and rode to the second fastest time ever over the 3,000m. Competition for the three places in the London World Cup and world championships will, however, remain intense, with Dani King and Jo Rowsell also in the frame.


The Cali track has produced some fast times and the results from the team sprint will provide Great Britain with food for thought. The Germany trio of Rene Enders, Maximilian Levy and Stefan Nimke registered a new world fastest time of 42.914, 0.036 quicker than the previous best set by Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny and Jamie Staff on their way to the gold medal in Beijing in 2008.


The Germans had already taken the European championships in Holland this season, where Great Britain finished only fifth after Kenny slipped while making his starting effort. The British sprinters are training in Australia and did not field a team in Colombia.

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