Line-up: From left, Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Carlisle’s Ellie Dickinson and Laura Kenny won silver at the Track Cycling World Championship in the team pursuit
Carlisle-born cyclist Ellie Dickinson helped Great Britain’s Track Cycling World Championship team pursuit side claim silver.
Partnering four-time Olympic champion Laura Kenny, Katie Archibald and Elinor Barker, the 20-year-old, from Houghton, helped the British team finish behind the Australian quartet of Ashlee Ankudinoff, Georgia Baker, Amy Cure and Annette Edmondson at the event in Pruszkow, Poland.
The Australians pulled almost a second clear before being reeled in during the final two laps. But they hung on to win by a little more than two tenths of a second with Kenny assuming responsibility for Britain’s silver medal.
“I feel I’ve let the girls down,” Kenny, who had been struggling with illness before the final which took place on Thursday, told BBC Sport. “I haven’t had the best legs the last couple of days and I feel a lot of responsibility for the times we’ve been doing.
“I didn’t pull nearly the turn lengths I was doing at home, so I’m disappointed about that. It’s just disappointing on the day.”
In the men’s team pursuit final, it was a similar story as Australia threw down the gauntlet to Great Britain ahead of the Tokyo Olympics next year.
Performance of the night belonged to Alex Porter, Samuel Welsford, Leigh Howard and Kelland O’Brien, who lit up the Arena Pruszkow track with a time of 3: 48.012 seconds over the four-kilometre distance, smashing the time they set at the Commonwealth Games last year.
Ed Clancy, Kian Emadi, Ethan Hayter and Charlie Tanfield turned in a highly respectable time of 3:50.81 but trailed Australia throughout.
Clancy said: “We actually rode pretty well, we were only a couple of tenths shy of what we did in Rio with our full Olympic package, but that’s just an indication of how good the Australian ride was.
“I held that world record for a decade, from 2008 to 2018 and when it first went, I was a bit miffed but the Australians are the best team pursuit team that’s ever been put together.”
