Geraint Thomas today stunned the crowd at the opening round of the track World Cup in Manchester, beating compatriot Bradley Wiggins’ Olympic gold medal time for the individual pursuit.
The 23 year old Welshman clocked up a mark of 4 minutes 15.015 seconds, over a tenth of a second quicker than Wiggins’ 4 minutes 15.165. This will be regarded as the unofficial world record as the four minute 11.114 seconds clocked up by another Briton, Chris Boardman, in 1996 was done in a now-banned ‘Superman’ position.
Thomas has been part of Britain’s team pursuit squad for several years and raced with the Barloworld team for the past two seasons. He is moving to the new Team Sky for 2010.
Last year he highlighted his potential in the individual event when he did a time of four minutes 17 seconds in training, then last week he clocked a time one second off that to win the British national title.
He will now race in the final this evening, going up against Belgium's Dominique Cornu. The latter caught and passed the Dutchman Arno Van Der Zwet in his head, recording a time of 4 minutes 17.390.
The 2.3 second gap between the finalists means that Thomas will be the firm favourite. But whichever rider comes out on top, he will have mixed feelings. The individual pursuit is one of the events heavily rumoured to be dropped from the Olympic programme when the current review is announced later this year.