Olympics cycling: British women win team pursuit track gold

Britain's dominance in the velodrome continued as their women's team pursuit trio set a new world record to clinch Olympic gold in style.

Dani King, Laura Trott and Joanna Rowsell clocked three minutes 14.051 seconds to beat the world record they set in the first round.

The United States took silver, more than five seconds behind Britain, with Canada edging out Australia in the race for bronze.

"It's mad," said Trott. "I can't believe it. It's been my dream since I was eight. We've gone and done it. I don't think we expected it."

Rowsell added: "I could tell we'd done it by the cheer of the crowd."

Team GB have now won four out of five track events, only missing out in the women's team sprint after Jess Varnish and Victoria Pendleton were disqualified from the final.

While some of those triumphs have been unexpected, this gold medal was not.

King, Trott and Rowsell, all of whom are aged under 23, had won the previous two World Championships and had broken the world record on each of their previous five rides, including qualifying on Friday and the first round earlier on Saturday, when they clocked 3:14.682.

Roared on by passionate home support inside the packed 6,000-capacity velodrome, they took another half a second off their fastest time.

Led off by Rowsell, whose job is to get them up to top speed inside a lap and a quarter, they opened up a decisive lead early in the 3km 12-lap race, and never looked like being caught.

It was soon all about whether another record would fall and, after achieving that, they saluted a delighted crowd at the finish line before embracing their families.

"We didn't expect a world record in every round, but we did it," said Trott.

Rowsell added: "The world record was a bonus.

"The crowd was absolutely fantastic and they really pushed us on through the last kilometre."

Britain's triumph comes in the first staging of the women's team pursuit event at the Olympics and follows a gold medal for the men's team pursuiters on Friday.

Trott, at 20 the youngest of the trio, will also go for gold in the women's omnium, a six-discipline event that begins on Monday.

If successful, she will become only the second female track cyclist to win two track golds at a single Games, joining France's Felicia Ballanger, who won the 500m time trial and women's sprint in Sydney in 2000.

"I can't think about the omni now, but it'll be nice to be another Olympic champion," she said.