Track Cycling World Cup: Britain claim double team pursuit gold

Great Britain won double gold on the opening day of the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in London, with victory in the men's and women's team pursuit.

The women's quartet of Laura Trott, Ciara Horne, Katie Archibald and Elinor Barker held off Australia in the final at the Lee Valley VeloPark.

While Mark Christian, Steven Burke, Andy Tennant and Owain Doull finished strongly to beat the New Zealand men.

There was disappointment in the team sprints with no Brits in the finals.

In the women's team pursuit, the world champions displayed their dominance of the event by using three different combinations through the phases to repeat their success in the opening round of the Track Cycling World Cup in Mexico last month.

Great Britain's women close on USA in their team pursuit semi-final

Olympic champion Trott, who begins a two-day omnium campaign on Saturday, was replaced by Horne in the semi-final as Great Britain cruised past the USA, but returned for the final at the expense of fellow London 2012 gold medallist Joanna Rowsell.

Fresh and rested, Trott's power threatened to splinter the GB team in the final stages of the race, but they regrouped to clock a time of four minutes 22.167 seconds to finish ahead of Australia, who finished in a time of 4:24.335.

Trott said: "We want to win every race but people are getting better and better. It's getting harder. You definitely feel the pressure now.

"It's that battle to get into the squad that keeps us going."

Britain's triumphant men clocked 4:00.957 to beat New Zealand's 4:05.425 in the final, after world champions and favourites Australia suffered an unfortunate puncture in their semi-final defeat to the Kiwis.

Great Britain's men's pursuit team went one better than their second place in Mexico in round one

The men's pursuit team is refocusing following a poor eighth-placed finish at the 2014 Track World Championships in Colombia and Burke feels the win is an important step towards challenging for the world title in Paris next February.

"We've got a good chance of making that happen," he said. "I'm very confident everything's coming together well and we can produce great things again."

In Friday's afternoon session, there was disappointment for Britain in the team sprint, with both the men and the women failing to qualify for the medal races.

The men's trio of Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and Callum Skinner had won gold at the Track World Cup in Mexico.