Heiko Salzwedel: Winning takes precedence over world records
There was plenty to ponder for Great Britain team pursuit coach Heiko Salzwedel as he huddled over his laptop at the velodrome at the UCI Track World Championships on Wednesday. The coach had just seen his strongest quartet of Bradley Wiggins, Jon Dibben, Steven Burke and Owain Doull set a time of 3:55.664 to qualify fastest for Thursday’s semi-final clash against Italy.
Although there was room for improvement, Salzwedel stressed that the pre-event talk of breaking their own 2012 world record came secondary to winning the world title.
“Bradley said something about the world record but don’t get me wrong I don’t really care about the world record at the moment. I care about the rainbow jersey and that’s all I care about at the moment,” Salzwedel told Cyclingnews and the Guardian after the heats.
Salzwedel is expected to alter his line-up for either the semi-final or the final – should, as expected, Great Britain see off the challenge from Italy.
“They won’t go faster than this,” Salzwedel said of Italy’s time of 3:57.800. “At the first kilometre of the Italians, we were first one second ahead. We are using different gears but maybe we start a bit slower and get the real speed out in the second half.”
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Australia misses medal in women’s team sprint by fractions
You would have struggled to fit a piece of paper in the gap that separated the Australians and the Germans in the bronze medal match-up in the women’s team sprint on the opening night of the World Championships.
With the formidable Anna Meares as rider number one, Australia was ahead after the first lap, but Stephanie Morton was unable to keep up the pace set by her more experienced counterpart over the second half, and they were pipped by the Germans by just over a tenth of a second.
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