CHARLIE Tanfield and the rest of the Great Britain team had to settle for silver in the final of the men's team pursuit at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships on Thursday night.
Great Britain's Ed Clancy, Charlie Tanfield, Oliver Wood, Kian Emadi and Ethan Hayter on the Podium for Men's Team Pursuit. Picture: SWPix.com
The Australian quartet of Alex Porter, Samuel Welsford, Leigh Howard and Kelland O'Brien broke their own world record to take gold.
The Australians set a time of three minutes 48.012 seconds, taking almost two seconds out of the record they set at the Commonwealth Games last year.
WORLD RECORD!!! 😱😱
— UCI Track Cycling (@UCI_Track) February 28, 2019
3:48.012 🕐 Australia 🇦🇺 are World Champions! #Pruszkow2019 pic.twitter.com/1S1Qx3HcL0
Great Ayton's Tanfield, Ed Clancy, Kian Emadi, Ethan Hayter and turned in a highly respectable time of 3:50.81 but trailed Australia throughout.
Three-time Olympic champion Clancy admitted Britain had no answers to Australia on the day but promised there was more to come as attention turns to Toyko next year.
"We actually rode pretty well, we were only a couple of tenths shy of what we did in Rio with our full Olympic package, but that's just an indication of how good the Australian ride was," he said.
"I sound like a broken record but you're only going to get our best performance at an Olympics for a number of reasons. We can't be complacent, we have to stay close and keep pushing them.
"We're all disappointed to have given up our world title but if we can keep moving forward like we are doing then we can give them a run at the big one."
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