Courtesy of Cyclingnews.com

Men's Team Pursuit: Great Britain delivers
By Paul Verkuylen in Sydney. Photo by John Veage

After setting the fastest time in qualifying this afternoon with a team that had never ridden together before, Great Britain came out again this evening to again show why they are the world's number one at the moment in this discipline, by clocking the fastest time once again to take out the final against New Zealand.

Like clockwork, the team produced consistent kilometre times that saw them almost in the same straight as New Zealand by the time the finishing gun fired.

"4:01 with this team with no particular preparation is pleasing this time of year," Britain's high performance manager Dave Brailsford told Cyclingnews shortly after they finished.

Bradley Wiggins was also happy but felt they have a lot more in them. "I wasn't brilliant, but it felt controlled really, we were all pretty flat out towards the end. We are all in different phases, I arrived here on Thursday morning after doing Gent Six Day, Chris Newton just came out as well and a couple of the guys were in Perth training," he said.

"It was nice to come together like that for the first time and put two rides together like that," Wiggins continued.

The winning team only came together two days ago and have had little time together on the track, "We did a standing two km in the afternoon [Thursday] on race pace, it was the only sort of preparation we had really," Wiggins said.

For the bronze medal ride-off, The Australian Toshiba team showed the huge crowd that Australia has plenty of depth of talent for the Beijing Olympics. The young squad went a further three seconds faster than their qualifying time to claim the final podium place. The time of 4.03.248 would have secured the silver medal should they have qualified just four hundredths of a second faster.

"Today I think we have shown that we are real contenders to be at the Olympics and not just ride for Australia, but contend for medals," Zac Dempster said after receiving his medal.

With so many Australian riders vying for a place on the teams pursuit squad, each riders will be under considerable pressure to prove they are worthy for their spot. Something Coach Ian McKenzie doesn't consider a bad thing. "Pressure builds diamonds," he said.

Final
1. Great Britain 4:01.196 59.702
2. New Zealand, 4:05.301 58.703
3. Toshiba (Australia) 4:03.248 59.198
4. Holland 4:07.188 58.255

Qualifying
By Karen Forman in Sydney

With the Kiwis holding first spot; the Australian Team Toshiba second, all eyes were then turned to the highly favored Great Britain team, last to ride off, to see what time current World Champions Bradley Wiggins and Edward Clancy; and team mates Stephen Cummings and Chris Newton, would produce. It was worth the wait.

The Brits rode a dignified race to qualify fastest in 4.04.160.

"We came here, we are not 100% prepared, Chris Newton just got off the plane. Its his first team pursuit for a couple of years. Bradley [Wiggins] just got off the plane. It's the first time that the lads have ridden together; they haven't actually trained together at all. We are pleased to qualify fastest, that was the aim, it was achieved, so we will just build on that for the final," Britain's high performance manager, Dave Brailsford said of the ride.

Tonight's finals will therefore pit Great Britain against New Zealand for the gold and silver and Team Toshiba against the Netherlands, who qualified in 4.07.078, for the bronze.

The Russians - winners at the last two Sydney World Cups - won't figure in the medals in the ride-offs tonight. The team of Mikhail Ignatiev, Alexei Markov, Alexander Serov and Nikolay Trusov, qualified fifth in 4.07.693.

1 Great Britain 4.04.160 (58.977 km/h)
Edward Clancy
Stephen Cummings
Chris Newton
Bradley Wiggins

2 New Zealand 4.05.976 (58.542 km/h)
Sam Bewley
Westley Gough
Marc Ryan
Jesse Sergent

3 Team Toshiba 4.06.316 (58.461 km/h)
Jack Bobridge
Peter Dawson
Zakkari Dempster
Mark Jamieson

4 Netherlands 4.07.078 (58.281 km/h)
Levi Heimans
Jenning Huizenga
Jens Mouris
Peter Schep

5 Russian Federation 4.07.693 (58.136 km/h)
Mikhail Ignatiev
Alexei Markov
Alexander Serov
Nikolay Trusov

6 Ukraine 4.08.241 (58.008 km/h)
Volodymyr Dyudya
Lyubomyr Polatayko
Maksym Polishchyuk
Vitaliy Shchedov

7 Denmark 4.08.348 (57.983 km/h)
Casper Jorgensen
Jenserik Madsen
Michael Morkov
Alex Rasmussen

8 Australia 4.09.105 (57.806 km/h)
Graeme Brown
Mathew Hayman
Mark Renshaw
Luke Roberts

9 Spain 4.09.158 (57.794 km/h)
Sergi Escobar Roure
Asier Maeztu Billelabeitia
David Muntaner Juaneda
Carlos Torrent Tarres

10 France 4.09.629 (57.685 km/h)
Damien Gaudin
Christophe Riblon
Nicolas Rousseau
Fabien Sanchez

11 Germany 4.11.881 (57.169 km/h)
Robert Bengsch
Patrick Gretsch
Leif Lampater
Olaf Pollack

12 Colombia 4.11.998 (57.143 km/h)
Carlos Eduardo Alzate Escobar
Juan Esteban Arango Carvajal
Arles Antonio Castro Laverde
Jairo Perez Suarez

13 Team Focus 4.12.698 (56.985 km/h)
Daniel Becke
Henning Bommel
Jörg Lehmann
Frank Schulz

14 Belgium 4.13.098 (56.894 km/h)
Kenny De Ketele
Ingmar De Poortere
Tim Mertens
Stijn Steels

15 Moscow 4.13.672 (56.766 km/h)
Evgeny Kovalev
Ivan Kovalev
Alexander Petrovskiy
Alexey Shmidt

16 Chile 4.15.787 (56.296 km/h)
Antonio Arriagada Marco
Antonio,Roberto Cabrera Torres
Enzo Cesario Farias
Luis,Fernando Sepulveda

17 Korea 4.16.974 (56.036 km/h)
Dong Hyun Choi
Sun Jae Jang
Joon Yong Seo
Jung Hwan Youm

18 People's Republic of China 4.19.059 (55.585 km/h)
Libin Chen
Wei Li
Teng Ma
Xuelong Qu

19 Iran 4.21.369 (55.094 km/h)
Abbas Saeidi Tanha
Mostafa Rezaei Khormizi
Mehdi Sohrabi
Amir Zargari

20 Malaysia 4.25.999 (54.135 km/h)
Akmal Amrun
Amir Rusli
Hariff Salleh
Jasmin Ruslan