Catch-up: Track Cycling World Cup

1. Result: Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Neah Evans, Ellie Dickinson beat Germany to gold medal in women's team pursuit
2. Result: GB's Lora Fachie wins para B individual pursuit gold ahead of compatriot Laura Cluxton
3. Result: GB beaten in men's team sprint final by Netherlands
4. Result: Ed Clancy, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter, Ollie Wood come fourth in men's team pursuit after defeat by France
5. Glasgow's Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome hosting the second round of the series
6. Remaining rounds in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and Canada

Cundy, Graham & Van Gass take gold in all-British sprint final

Van Gass, Cundy & Graham take mixed para C1-5 team sprint gold

Jody Cundy, Finlay Grahan & Jaco van Gass triumph in the all-British final of the mixed para C1-5 team sprint final.

GB cruise to women's team pursuit gold

GB cruise past Germany to take gold in the women's team pursuit

Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Neah Evans & Ellie Dickinson comfortably beat Germany to earn a superb gold in the women's team pursuit.

GB double in para individual pursuit

GB's Lora Fachie wins gold with Laura Cluxton second in para B individual pursuit

Liverpool's Lora Fachie takes gold and Laura Cluxton silver as Great Britain take the top two spots in the para B individual pursuit.

Deignan aiming for Olympic road race

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Deignan won the World Championship road race in 2015

Lizzie Deignan is targeting the Olympic road race in Tokyo next year as she makes a full return to the sport after giving birth to her daughter Orla.

Now 30, and with husband and former Sky rider Phil Deignan having retired as a rider, Lizzie will make her cycling the priority once again.

"I don't want to go in there thinking 'I'm a mum'. I want to go in there as a professional rider who's a mum,” she said. “Last year, the reasons for my results were that I'd just become a mum, next year it won't factor in as much.”

Deignan finished fifth in the Olympic road race in Rio in 2016 but believes she could finish higher next year, having seen the course, which lies in the shadow of Mount Fuji.

“I really like it, it's reminiscent of a really hard Classic, something like a Liege-Bastogne-Liege,” she said. “The climbs are longer than in the Amstel Gold, they're more like Liege in length so it suits me.”

Deignan finished seventh in Liege this year in her third race back. She went on to finish 14th in the Tour of California and won the Women's Tour in June. She was unable to add the World Championship title in her home county of Yorkshire.

"I'll race more this [next] year," she said. "I need the race days. I'll do the Women's Tour and then the Giro so that will be a big block of racing."

Watt next for Team Huub?

The last World Cup event in Minsk saw the beginning of the end of the road for British privateer team Huub-Wattbike, who have been outlawed by new UCI rules that restrict World Cup entry to national teams.

The Derby-based team went out with something of a bang in the Belarusian capital, beating GB into eighth in the men’s team pursuit and taking second in the individual pursuit through John Archibald.

They will take part in Glasgow this weekend and have plans for the future too, with a shift of emphasis towards the business of breaking records instead of winning races.

Leader Dan Bigham, an aerodynamics whizz with experience in Formula One, has outlined their targets as the team pursuit world record, the individual pursuit world record and even the Hour Record, until recently held by Bradley Wiggins.

"It's not nice to be forced out of the sport but it's given us the focus to squeeze out every last bit of performance,” said Bigham. “We did everything we could to make our mark on the sport and know we damn well made an impact."

The team launched in 2017 as Team KGF and have won two Track World Cup golds in team pursuit and one individual pursuit.

Of their riders, Charlie Tanfield has moved on to the Great Britain team and won a world title in 2018, putting him on course for a place in Tokyo, while Bigham and Archibald have both had rides for GB at World Championships.

Their goodbye will come at the Brisbane World Cup event in mid-December before they move on to the altitude of Bolivia, 8,500 feet (2,600 metres) above sea level, where Archibald will aim to put a dent in both the individual pursuit and the hour record.

Both are ambitious targets but Australia's team pursuit worl mark of 3min :48.012sec – is the one they see as being doable and their primary target. "Imagine watching the racing in Tokyo and your time is on the screen,” said Bigham. “Team Huub-Wattbike, a bunch of lads from Derby. It would be hilarious.”

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Happier times: Huub-Wattbike after winning the team pursuit at last year's London World Cup event

Tour of California gets axed

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Egan Bernal on his way to victory in last year's Tour of California

After 14 years on the cycling calendar, the Tour of California is set to disappear next year, with the event’s organisers saying they hope this will prove to be a temporary absence rather than a permanent one.

A World Tour event since 2017, the Tour Of California was won in May by Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar, who took over as holder of the title from Colombia’s Egan Bernal, the winner of the Tour de France this year.

"This has been a very difficult decision to make, but the business fundamentals have changed since we launched the race 14 years ago," said Tour of California president Kristin Klein. "We are very proud of the work we have done [but] it has become more challenging each year to mount the race."

The plan is to relaunch the race in 2021 if Klein can forge a business model that allows it – and he has the support of American Cycling Federation president Bob Stapleton, who said his organisation would “stand ready to help rally additional support and resources”.

Places up for grabs for Tokyo Madison

Katie Archibald and Elinor Barker will line up a chance to take part in the first-ever Olympic women’s Madison when they pair up to take on the event in Glasgow this weekend.

With Laura Trott, Neah Evans and Emily Nelson waiting in the wings, Great Britain has plenty of options for Tokyo 2020, where two of the five riders for the team pursuit will take part in the first women's Madison in the Games.

"I think we're in a really good place," said Barker. "We've still got a few races left to determine the final pairing. Everyone wants it and I think we've got a number of capable riders."

Archibald looks to have a good chance of being one of the pair for Tokyo, having won World Cup, World Championship, national, and Six day titles with Barker and Kenny, Nelson, Barker and Evans respectively. In the last of those, in London last month, Archibald and Evans won with Barker and Kenny in second place.”

This weekend it's with Elinor and the last time we rode together at a home World Cup we did so to great success, so I'm really looking forward to it,” said Archibald.

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Katie Archibald (left) wins the 2018 London World Cup Madison with Laura Kenny

Kenny’s test role with new GB bikes

British cycling legends Jason Kenny and Ed Clancy - who have no fewer than nine Olympic gold medals between them - have been among the riders who have tested the new range of track bikes that the GB team will be riding in next year’s Tokyo Olympics.

“You know straight away if the rider is happy,” said British Cycling’s head of technology, Tony Purnell. “The first test with Jason was nerve-wracking. He calls a spade a spade - but the feedback is good.”

The bikes cost £15,000 and foreign riders have already expressed an interest in what Purnell calls ‘a great story for British manufacturing’.

The new regulations stating that any new bike designs have to be in service nine months before the Olympics has made the testing schedule a tight one.

"You know you're sentencing yourself to long weekends, working night after night and lots of dramas because engineering is difficult," Purnell said.

“The first tests - God, I was nervous. These riders call a spade a spade and if they get off and say, 'Look, Tony, it's not right', there's no time to do anything about it.”

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Jason Kenny: Not short of an opinion, according to Tony Purnell

GB’s Tokyo bikes on show in Glasgow

Britain's cyclists will showcase the new bikes they will be taking to next year’s Olympics at this week’s World Cup event in Glasgow.

The bike is a collaboration by Lancashire mountain bike makers Hope, Lotus Engineering, scientists at Cambridge University and engineers Renishaw. The jet-black carbon fibre frame weighs in at 1.4kg, roughly the same weight as the average human brain. .

Lotus's Richard Hill, in charge of aerodynamics, compares the bike to Chris Boardman’s machine that won him individual pursuit gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Hill was involved in developing that bike too.

"We had some tense moments waiting for answers back from [cycling governing body] the UCI,” he said. “It's about pushing the limits.” UCI rules state the bikes used in Tokyo must be commercially available and ridden at least nine months before the Games.

Tony Purnell, former principal of Formula One motor racing teams Jaguar and Red Bull, described the project as ‘a bit hair-brained’ but added “All we want to do is look our riders in the eye and say this is the fastest bike we know how to make - and that's what we've done.”

Vuelta A Yorkshire?

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Vuelta Director Javier Guillen is keeping a watching brief on a possibly start in Yorkshire

Plans to bring the Vuelta a Espana to the cycling-mad county of Yorkshire are still in the pipeline but nothing is expected to happen until 2024, according to the Spanish Grand Tour’s organisers.

After the 2014 Tour de France had its Grand Depart and second stage in Yorkshire, The Vuelta has been in contact with tourist agency Welcome To Yorkshire about having a start in the county.

Race director Javier Guillen has confirmed there has been contact but added that earlier reports suggesting a Yorkshire start in mid-August 2021 were premature, saying there is still nothing on paper.

"There's a real possibility we'll be there in five or six years,” said Guillen. “But at the moment it's speculation."

Next year’s Vuelta will be in the Netherlands, with a non-Spanish start ruled out for four years after that because of the extra travel days that need building into the schedule.

The county already has its own event, the Tour de Yorkshire and the UCI staged the World Road Championships there this year.

WTY chief executive Sir Gary Verity, the father of the Tour De Yorkshire, left under a cloud in March this year, leaving the company facing a number of investigations and moving Vuelta discussions to the back burner.

What is it?

The Track Cycling World Cup is a six-stage series, with Galsgow being the second event in the calendar. It offers riders the chance to earn qualifying points for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and is being held at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome from 8-10 November.

The meeting comprises of both cycling and para-cycling events. Scotland's Katie Archibald is one of six Olympic medallists in the Great Britain team alongside Elinor Barker, Ed Clancy, Phil Hindes, Jason Kenny and Katy Marchant.

The event kicked off in Belarus on 1 November. The remaining rounds are in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

BBC coverage

Friday, 8 November

18:55-21:35 - BBC Red Button, Connected TV and online

Schedule

19:00

Para women's BVI 3km pursuit: Finals

Para men's BVI 4km pursuit: Finals

Women's team pursuit: Finals

Para women's C4 3km pursuit: Finals

Para women's C5 3km pursuit: Finals

Men's team pursuit: Finals

Women's team pursuit: First round & Finals

Men's team sprint: Finals

Para-cycling mixed C1-5 team sprint: Finals

Saturday, 9 November

14:30-16:00 - BBC One (Highlights)

18:25-22:15 - BBC Red Button, Connected TV and online

Schedule

18:30

Women's omnium: Scratch, tempo, elimination and points

Men's sprint: Finals

Women's keirin: Second round and finals

Men's madison: Finals

Sunday, 10 December

14:25-18:05 - BBC Red Button, Connected TV and online

19:00-20:00 - BBC Four (Highlights)

Schedule

14:30

Men's omnium: Scratch, tempo, elimination and points

Women's sprint: Finals

Men's keirin: Second round and finals

Women's madison: Finals

How to get into Cycling?

What is cycling?

Road cycling, the most common form of cycling, is simply riding a bike outside for exercise, sport or to get from A to B. Track cycling adds a competitive element and sees riders race around a specialist track at high speeds.

Is it for me?

From young children on stabilisers, through to adults going for long countryside rides, cycling is for everyone. Sick of being stuck in traffic? Cycling to work is also one of the easiest ways to fit exercise into your daily routine. There are also a number of cycling clubs around the UK, where coffee and cake stops are as important as the route you ride!

How do I start?

Just hop on a bike and you're good to go British Cycling, Scottish Cycling, Welsh Cycling and Cycle NI have information about clubs and racing tracks, and the Breeze programme for women cyclists offers a range of safe and sociable cycle routes for all abilities. If you don't have access to a bike there are hundreds of bike rental facilities across the UK.