GB dominate at the European Track Championships

BySportsbeat

Updated 14/10/2015 at 22:05 GMT

Great Britain made a positive start to the European Track Championships with both the men's and women's team pursuit squads dominating in qualifying in Switzerland.

Great Britain made a positive start to the European Track Championships

Image credit: Reuters

In the men's event, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Andy Tennant, Steven Burke and Owain Doull set a time of 3:57.277 minutes to qualify for Thursday's first round and a ride against Russia.

And Doull, part of the team that won the European title a year ago in Guadeloupe, was content with their opening gambit.

"We didn't really know what to expect coming in because we've been doing a lot of training into it," Doull told British Cycling.

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"That was the aim to do something around that time and have a nice smooth consistent ride. Yeah pretty successful.”

Earlier the quartet of Joanna Rowsell Shand, Laura Trott, Elinor Barker and Ciara Horne also qualified fastest, stopping the clock at 4:21.089, over nine seconds faster than nearest challengers Russia.

And Horne, who made her international track debut for Great Britain at the 2014 European Track Championships, also left the arena with her head held high."Really happy - we qualified fastest.

It was a really good, solid team effort, really chuffed," said the 26-year-old, with the women's squad now facing Poland in Thursday's first round with a place in the medal finals up or grabs.

"We were trying a new strategy and yeah it worked really well so happy with that."

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