Britain secure two silver medals on Track World Cup opening day

Clancy won Olympic team pursuit gold medals in Beijing, London and Rio and it was the same event in which he starred on the opening night in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

A silver medal came the 33-year-old’s way but he was not the only one on the podium, joined by Stewart, Kian Emadi, Ollie Wood and fellow Olympic champion Steven Burke.

But that wasn’t all that Commonwealth champion Stewart had to celebrate, going on to win points race silver as Britain opened up with two medals on the opening night.

Qualifying third fastest with a time of 3:55.538, the stage was set for Britain to reach a medal final in the first round, duly delivering to comfortably overcome New Zealand.

Stopping the clock in 3:53.353 proved enough to reach the gold medal race but Denmark would bring with them a new challenge in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

And so it proved as two false starts, one a British technical and the other a Danish line infringement, saw the race start three times as the British rhythm was disrupted, their opponents eventually making the catch.

But a place on the podium provided a silver lining and Britain’s first medal of the Track World Cup season, with two days of competition still to come in France.

There was still more to come from the British team in the form of Stewart, maintaining his excellent 2018 form to secure silver in the points race.

Winning four of the first six sprints saw him make an excellent start, while taking a lap saw him hit the 40-point mark by the halfway stage.

Only five more came his way but they proved invaluable, pipping Christos Volikakis to silver while gold went to Moritz Malcharek.