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Pendleton and Reade take silver in team sprint

Thursday, 26 March 2009
Lionel Birnie, photos by Andy Jones
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TEAM SPRINT

Victoria Pendleton’s and Shanaze Reade’s short but very successful run in the women’s team sprint came to an end tonight as they were beaten to the world title for the first time in the events history.

Having won the title in 2007 and 2008 they had to make do with silver in Poland as GB’s wait for their first gold medal was stretched out a little longer.

"To beat the Australian team we needed an extra tenth of a second compared with the qualifying round, and we had that," Pendleton said afterwards. The only problem was they found another tenth too."

Pendleton still has two golds to go for this week, but she's not going to walk away with the titles as she has done in the last two years. "[I'm] obviously disappointed, but at the end of the day Oz did better and that’s what sport's about."

It was a fifth medal for the British team, and a closer look at the times suggests Pendleton will face a tough challenge from Simona Krupeckaite in the individual sprint competition tomorrow.

Pendleton posted a second lap of 14.185 seconds, a quarter of a second faster than Anna Meares, but the same margin down on Krupeckaite who took bronze with Gintare Gaivenyte. The Lithuanian was no match for Pendleton in the Olympics last year, but she seems to be in much better form here having already broken the world record in the 500m time trial.

Qualifying for the women's sprint starts tomorrow as Pendleton looks to make it three world titles in a row. To do this she'll be as reliant on her tactics as she will be on her famous leg speed.

Results: Women's team sprint
1. Australia 33.149
2. Great Britain 33.380
3. Lithuania 33.495
4. France 33.638

Qualifying
1. Australia (Kaarle McCulloch, Anna Meares) 33.452
2. Great Britain (Shanaze Reade, Victoria Pendleton) 33.598
3. France (Sandie Clair, Clara Sanchez) 33.609
4. Lithuania (Gintare Gaivenyte, Simon Krupeckaite) 33.617
5. Netherlands (Yvonne Hijgenaar, Willy Kanis) 33.791
6. Germany (Kristina Vogel, Miriam Welte) 33.922
7. China (Jinjie Gong, Lulu Zheng) 34.475
8. Russia (Swetlana Grankovskaya, Olga Streltsova) 34.733
9. Poland (Renata Dabrowska, Aleksandra Drejgier) 35.095
10. Honk Kong (Wai see Lee, Zhao Juan Meng) 36.418