Aussie team great at Track World Champs, but room for improvement yet

Australia’s strong performance in the world track championships in Cali, Colombia this week was even more satisfying because the best performances came from a new generation of talent.

Overall the team won eight medals: three gold, two silver and three bronze.

It’s a good sign the team is developing a really strong foundation for the Commonwealth Games, and building through to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Where previously the team has relied on the experience and class of Anna Meares to lead the medal tally, in Cali it was relative unknowns Alex Edmondson and Amy Cure who led the way.

Germany and France won more gold, thanks to their star sprinters Kristina Vogel and Francois Pervis, respectively. Each won three events, and were clearly the dominant athletes of the meet.

Australia’s successes carried on a strong legacy in the men’s pursuits, events Australia has had a stranglehold on at recent World Championships, but continual rejuvenation of the pursuit squad means the personnel are completely different to previous dominant teams.

Alex Edmondson’s individual pursuit victory was the fourth consecutive World Championship won by an Australian, following Jack Bobridge in 2011 and Michael Hepburn in 2012 and 2013.

It’s a meteoric rise for a 20-year-old rider who has only been in the national pursuit team since 2013.

He was joined in the team pursuit by Glenn O’Shea, Luke Davison, Mitchell Mulhern and Miles Scotson (who rode the qualifying round).

O’Shea is a former world champion in the Omnium and has been a mainstay of the team pursuit since the 2012 world championships. For Davison, Scotson and Mulhern, it was their first senior team at an Olympic or World Championships.

The rate of turnover is both a testament to the success of the Australian development programme – which is able to continually produce the best pursuit riders in the world – and a reminder that the best track endurance riders inevitably turn quickly to professional careers on the road.

Edmondson slurred his way through an interview not long after his IP victory, clearly still affected by lactic acid and oxygen debt (nobody is at their most articulate after an effort like that – perhaps half an hour to let him recover would have been fairer) but his elation came through clearly:

“I’m really speechless… it’s been an amazing couple of days. With the team pursuit, that was what we all came here for, and to come away with what we did there was just amazing, but to be able to [win the IP] less than 24 hours afterwards is just absolutely amazing…

“All these hard trainings I’ve put in, I’ve dedicated myself 100 per cent for this, and put my full belief in Tim [Decker, national men’s team pursuit coach] and it’s worked an absolute treat.”

It’s telling that the team pursuit is the focus, with the individual event a bonus.

The other breakout performance from the Australian team was Amy Cure’s intelligent and powerful ride to win the women’s points race.

Better known as a pursuit rider (Cure also won a bronze medal in the team pursuit with Annette Edmondson, Melissa Hoskins and Bella King), Cure collected sprint points where she could, before taking a lap and a 20 point bonus.

Her final tally of 18 sprint points was second only behind legendary Italian rider Giorgia Bronzini, who failed to take a lap.

It was a mature and calculated ride from Cure, who is still only 21 but has been in the national senior team since her debut in the 2010 World Cup in Manchester.

Cure rides for the Lotto-Belisol women’s team on the road, and her palmares is already looking impressive.

Annette ‘Nettie’ Edmondson – Alex’s sister – is another rider who has been a successful member of the national squad for a few years now, and her bronze in the women’s Omnium was a repeat of her performance at the London Olympics, capping off her bronze in the team pursuit.

Nettie Edmondson spoke to The Roar not long ago, discussing her split ambitions on the track and the road, so it was great to see her back in sparkling form after a crash-marred Australian summer on the road.

Meanwhile, a disappointing seventh for Anna Meares in the sprint left the great sprinter searching for positives:

“Sometimes you have a bad day, and today was a baaad day, unfortunately. I can take a lot from it so there’s lots of positives that can come out of it, but the levels are really stepping up and I wasn’t able to match it tonight.

“I always go hard and try to win races, it’s just some days you get beat. You’ve just got to make sure you’re not defeated.”

It’s difficult to avoid cliche when describing Meares’ ability to pick herself up after a confidence-draining loss. Her mental strength is an asset that defines her every bit as much as her power and speed.

Meares returned with a vengeance to grab a silver medal in the 500m time trial, just 0.09s behind Germany’s Miriam Welte. A second silver came in the keirin, behind Welte’s team sprint teammate Kristina Vogel, who is riding like she has a second set of legs.

Yes, this was another inspirational Anna Meares performance. Chalk it up.

“[I’m] very happy! I was not sure how I was going to go today, I just tried to listen to my coach as much as possible, and race the races that he wanted me to race.

“Making the final I was so pleased, and I just said to him, ‘I’ll give you all I’ve got’”.

“I was so happy to fight as much as I did and come as close as I did to Kristina, who has… had fantastic form all season, she’s been undefeated all season, and she’s continued that here. Hats off to her.”

This was Meares’ first major championship since the Olympics, a fact she acknowledged by pointing out there’s a long way to go until Rio:

“It’s hard to try and come back after such a long break, and I’m working with what I’ve got, as best I can, and I know that I’ll get better.”

The next major competition on the track is the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, which starts in late July.

If the Aussie team’s performance relative to major Commonwealth rivals England and New Zealand continues in the same fashion as it did in Cali, we can look forward to another strong medal haul.