Olympic legends Jason and Laura Kenny will be looking to add to their glittering medal collection after being named in an all-star British team for the Tissot UCI Track World Cup.
British Cycling has revealed the riders for the opening two rounds of the competition - in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France this weekend (October 19-21) and Milton, Canada (October 26-28).
The Kennys, with ten Olympic titles between them, will make their first appearance in this season’s Track World Cup in Canada as they continue their preparations for Tokyo 2020.
Triple Olympic champion Ed Clancy and two-time gold medallist Steve Burke will also be bringing their wealth of experience to the team when they take to the track in both competitions.
And Great Britain Cycling Team Performance Director, Stephen Park, admits excitement for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is already growing as the competition within the team heats up.
“We’re really beginning to feel that excitement now growing within the team – for the first two years of an Olympic cycle you’re slowly building, but now we’re really beginning to accelerate the programme towards Tokyo,” he said.
“Competition to get into our Olympic team will be incredibly tough, which means at every training session and every race, there’s now that little edge of everyone trying to show what they can do.
“That creates an excitement within the team, along with that internal competition that we believe is essential to make sure we get our riders to put in those last little bits of efforts to get in a position where we have the strongest possible team representing Great Britain in 2020.”
World team pursuit champion Kian Emadi will look to add another title to his collection in France, with Olympic and Commonwealth bronze medallist Katy Marchant also featuring.
Two-time Track World Cup champion Mark Stewart, who stormed to a sensational points gold for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in April, will feature at both events, as will world silver medallists Ryan Owens and Oliver Wood.
Lauren Bate, who was part of the Commonwealth bronze-medal winning team sprint outfit, is another who will compete in France, along with Meg Barker and Becky Raybould.
Jack Carlin and Joe Truman, both runners-up on the world stage, will compete at the Paris velodrome along with three-time European silver medallist Emily Kay and Neah Evans, who took European team pursuit gold as part of the British quartet earlier this year.
The line-up in Milton boasts six different riders taking to the track including six-time Olympic gold medallist Jason Kenny and Britain’s most successful ever female Olympian Laura Kenny.
Jason, a five-time Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup winner, and Laura, a nine-time champion, will compete at their first Track World Cup together since 2016.
Meanwhile, Rio 2016 Olympic champion Katie Archibald will race on the track where she claimed two first place finishes in Madison and the points race in Milton last year.
Double Olympic champion Phil Hindes will also be in Canada, while 20-year-old prodigy Eleanor Dickinson returns to the Track Cycling World Cup in Ontario.
She claimed team pursuit gold in Glasgow in 2016, alongside triple world champion Elinor Barker, part of the team pursuit gold-medal winning quartet in Rio. Sportsbeat 2018