Ed Clancy’s verdict after Team GB miss out in men’s team pursuit at Tokyo Olympics

It is fair to say the competition did not play out as GB would have envisioned, with Clancy – the most successful team pursuit rider ever – forced to retire because of a back injury after the qualifiers on Monday.

That saw reserve, Great Ayton’s Charlie Tanfield join forces with Wakefield’s Oliver Wood, Ethan Hayter and Ethan Vernon.

They were well beaten by Denmark in their first-round race, Wood the first to pull away before Tanfield was dropped as a clearly rusty team struggled.

The race ended with the Danes catching, but not seeing, Tanfield, and crashing into the back of him, leading to questions over whether they might be disqualified.

They were not and went into the gold medal race, in which they were pipped by Italy, while GB got the better of Switzerland in the race for seventh.

And Clancy, part of the winning teams in Beijing, London and Rio, was honest in his assessment that even without the retirement and crashes, GB would not have been able to live with the top two, who both went under the world record time in the final.

Asked if GB could have won gold, he said: “Honestly, no. Not this time. We’d have perhaps been in the medals but I honestly don’t think we’d have been good enough to do that, it’s the truth and that’s all right.

“If we are going to move forward and do something about this, we need to start off with the willingness to accept that there are other teams out there doing what we do better than us right now.

“It is not through a lack of commitment, on the riders or the staff. We need to have a willingness to accept that there’s people doing it better. The second thing we need to do is have a look at the key facts and data and act upon it and do it quick because Paris is not that far away.”

Elsewhere on Wednesday, Leeds’ Katy Marchant overcame an early hiccup to book her place in the quarter-finals of the women’s Keirin.

A bronze medallist in the individual sprint in Rio, Marchant won her heat only to be relegated for having dropped into the sprinting lane too early.

That meant she would have to go through the repechage, but she came through with flying colours, and was optimistic that the extra racing would serve her well after so little opportunity to work on her race craft in the past 18 months.

She said: “I think tactically the racing was really good. I just had a mishap coming into turn three (in the heat) but that’s another opportunity to practise and I’d rather learn that lesson in the first round than in the semis or finals tomorrow.

“When we’ve missed so missed so many opportunities over the last 18 months to ride into form a little bit…my legs are feeling good so I’m confident.”

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