Australian track cycling team bosses admit they have plenty of work to do if they are to be competitive enough to challenge world-beating Britain at the 2016 Games in Rio.
For the second consecutive Olympics Australia was humiliated by an all-conquering British team, securing only one gold medal courtesy of a final day surge from Anna Meares to finish second in the table.
Despite rules changes limiting each nation to one rider per event, Britain equalled their record haul from Beijing by winning seven of the 10 golds on offer for a total of nine.
Had it not been for Meares’ win over Victoria Pendleton in the sprint onf Tuesday it would have been eight golds for the hosts.
Four months after a string of performances at the Melbourne world championships which suggested the gap between Britain and the chasing pack was minimal, the hosts left their rivals in their wake.
Australian track cycling’s high performance director Kevin Tabotta attributed Britain’s dominance to home support.
“There’s been a bit of thought as to how the gap has become so big since Melbourne, but a lot of it does come down to home crowd,” said Tabotta, noting also that Britain had timed their peak to perfection.
“They’re a very well prepared team, there’s no doubt about that,” he added.
“They peak for one week, every four years – and they do it better than anyone else in the world.
“They put a lot of energy to peaking in the one week and they’re the masters of it. And it’s up to us to work out how they do it and take them on at their own game. We’ve got some work to do, but so does every other nation.
“We’ve just got to go back and work harder and come at them in 2016.”
Tabotta added: “Our worst result this week was fifth place out of 10 events, so we had to scrap for everything.
“So the five medals aren’t exactly what we were after at the start of the week, but we’re happy that we’re in the game with every event.”
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