How we win is as important as winning, says British chief Park

While not everything went to plan there were plenty of positives as both youth and experience triumphed – providing some good news for cycling while ongoing controversies at home continue with today’s publication of a Parliamentary report into doping culture in sport.

Gold medals came in the men’s team pursuit and women’s Madison, Laura and Jason Kenny helped win silver in the women’s team pursuit and men’s team sprint, and young riders Jack Carlin and Mark Stewart had a silver and bronze respectively.

Great Britain’s performance director Stephen Park said the results show the programme is moving in the right direction despite the negative headlines.

“There are a huge number of changes that have gone on within the organisation in terms of what we do and how we do it, “ he said. “We fully recognise it’s not just what we achieve, but how we achieve it is important.

“Our role is to win medals, and we don’t want to win any less than we did, but we fully recognise that how we win is as important as winning itself.”

British Cycling had agreed with UK Sport a target of three medals for these championships - but had already secured that many before the end of the second day.

“When you look at the events we’ve been competitive in its across the board,” Park said.

“There are young riders coming through and that upward pressure puts pressure on the incumbents.”

There was almost one more medal for Britain in the final event of the week, but Ollie Wood and Mark Stewart missed out on bronze by a single point to Australia in the men’s Madison, won by Germany.

The British pair won three sprints in the race, but with Australia one of four teams to gain a lap they could not make up the difference.

“It was flat out from the start and we knew we had to get involved,” Stewart said.

“If you see yourself up the leaderboard mentally you just move to the front of the race and we did that. But when guys like (Australia’s Cameron Meyer) go and get a lap it’s so hard.

“I’m happy with how we rode it. We’ll go back and look at the video and where we missed that one point.”

At the start of the final day, Elinor Barker looked to be Britain’s best chance of further success as she defended the points race title she won in Hong Kong 12 months ago.

But the 23-year-old could only manage 12th place, continuing a frustrating few days after she crashed in the women’s omnium on Friday, forcing her to miss the Madison in which Katie Archibald and Emily Nelson won gold on Saturday.

Leeds’s Katy Marchant finished ninth in the women’s keirin, won by Belgium’s Nicky Degrendele.