Elinor Barker Takes Gold As GB Women Stay On Track For Tokyo Glory

Elinor Barker was part of the Great Britain team that celebrated UCI Track World Cup gold in the women’s team pursuit as they build towards the Tokyo Olympics.

Wales’ Olympic and Commonwealth Games champion Barker joined Katie Archibald, Ellie Dickinson and Neah Evans in beating Germany in the final to take gold in an impressive time of four minutes 12.244 seconds in Glasgow on Friday night.

Barker’s team recorded a time more than a second and a half quicker than that which brought European success in Holland recently.

Over the coming months Barker and her team-mates will test themselves against the best in the world in the World Cup series, the second round of which is in Glasgow.

Barker will also contest the scratch race, the event in which she won the second individual world title of her career in Poland earlier this year.

They look happy with that one @EleanorMay_3, @_katiearchibald, @elinorbarker and @neahevans in Glasgow after that team pursuit performance! #TissotUCITrackWC @TrackWorldCup pic.twitter.com/oPgZxyuuQY

— British Cycling (@BritishCycling) November 8, 2019

But all the competitions are now geared towards Japan and next year’s Games and Barker says: “I like that everything gets more focused; you can feel that everything is ramping up, and everyone is kind of on a countdown.

“Whereas in most years we’ll have track and road, and if one thing isn’t going so well you know there’s another race coming up, next year there is one very important race. There’s not a lot to take your mind off it, so what’s stressful is also what makes it special, and you kind of have to take both together.

After taking gold ahead of the Germans, Evans, who, like Archibald, was racing on home turf in Scotland, said: “It’s the fastest I’ve ever gone, and the fastest the team has gone in a while.

“We’re now close enough to Tokyo that we’re looking ahead to that and thinking we’ve got so much more to come.

“We’ve still not done a lot of the top end stuff. It’s so encouraging we’re doing these great times and we know in the plan we’ve got more to build on.”